7 ms·

Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet

560 points by MindGods 6y ago

ashtonkem 6y ago
I noticed that without the verified accounts, there weren’t a lot of focal points for rage and partisanship to collect. I suspect that’s part of why twitter felt so different during the blue-out.
jeffreyrogers 6y ago
Not sure where I heard it, but someone said: twitter is a mirror pretending to be a window. It's easy to get this experience every day by just not following verified accounts.
- jbaudanza 6y ago
  I would agree, except that Twitter pushes so much content from people you don't follow while attempting to keep you engaged. I'm talking about the likes, retweets, comments, etc. If twitter did only display content from people you followed, it would actually be quite pleasant to read. I created a Chrome extension to do this, but the recent redesign broke it and I haven't figured out how to get it to work again. The new css/class system is rather opaque.
  - insin 6y ago
    I wrote an extension which does that; it keeps you on the Latest Tweets timeline and moves retweets to their own fake timeline, so by default you only see original tweets and quote tweets from people you follow: https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-twitter https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-twitter I've been using Twitter this way for years and consequently find the unmodified version completely unusable, so it was either learn how to do it on New Twitter or quit using it at all.
    - delecti 6y ago
      That seems redundant. You can already turn off seeing retweets from accounts you follow, and the "latest tweets" timeline is already pretty sticky. I've never had it revert to the default "home" timeline across any computer or phone app install.
      - mjcl 6y ago
        My experience has been about once a month the iOS app (phone & tablet) will revert from Latest to Top. It will show an easy-to-miss toast message saying "You're now seeing top tweets first."
        FreezerburnV 6y ago
        Once a month sounds nice. Mine likes to revert within a week :) (for the times I actually use twitter more than a couple times a month)
    - jbaudanza 6y ago
      This is great, thank you! Installed!
  - asicsp 6y ago
    I use separate private lists and only visit them instead of home page. No content pushing from Twitter, so far.
  - jabroni_salad 6y ago
    I use alternative applications. Tweetdeck on desktop and Flamingo for android. Among other things, they can view my follows in chronological order with no algorithm nonsense.
  - jekri99 6y ago
    I agree. Got sick of the pushing. Switched to going to the source, skipping social media which is just “Mechanical Turk for dumb shit”. Discord/Slack groups for projects that have them. Email is working great for connecting to academics and open source communities that don’t give a shit about Slack. Twitter and Facebook seem anachronistic and archaic to me. If I wanted to know what the average American thinks about daily life right now, I’ll write in my journal or ask my neighbor.
  - Terr_ 6y ago
    > from people you don't follow To try to recover the metaphor: A television pretending to be a window. Which... isn't a new problem.
- dleslie 6y ago
  Not following is not sufficient; all of the people you follow must also avoid verified accounts or at least not like or retweet them.
  - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    You can mute the verified accounts you don't like.
    - dleslie 6y ago
      I cannot easily mute them all, and simply not following them won't work because I cannot be assured that my peers won't retweet or like them.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  twitter is not mirror, it is another stage controlled by political actors who use it in a circular means to support stories pushed through other media, especially the news. People bemoan corporate influence over the internet but completely ignore the fact the political parties exercise even far more influence because unlike a business they have sycophants within many organizations and it all is directed as a whole. the anger in today's society is nearly all generated by these groups which control so much of the media and social sites that you cannot avoid it. they poison every conversation so when they go missing it can be deafening
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  "Just only follow the accounts that interest you" is the lie we were all fed when we were forced off RSS and onto Twitter. It's just not true, politics and verified accounts creep through the woodwork like a silverfish infestation sooner or later no matter who you follow. Either by algorithm or by someone you followed for a different reason turning their account into a politics account. Twitter could have a global switch to turn all this stuff off but chooses not to because the power to show you this stuff is more desirable than providing you a stress free space.
api 6y ago
I posted this to some friends: PSA: Twitter has been very badly hacked. Apparently their internal systems were compromised allowing posts as all kinds of accounts. So... if your favorite celebrity, business leader, intellectual, or politician says something stupid... hmm... actually never mind. I don't see any difference between hacked Twitter and normal Twitter. Carry on.
sambroner 6y ago
My twitter feed was pretty slow without the Blue Checks. The dialogue was way more in the middle. There was suddenly little conversation about today's meme (cake? idk.) The whole thing felt pretty civilized. It made me realize how much content these twitter blue checks are creating. It's crazy.
- fernandotakai 6y ago
  not only that but how partisan blue checks are. i felt the same: a lot of middle ground conversation, but nobody was calling out each other with quoted RTs.
  - api 6y ago
    That's how you get to be a Twitter celebrity: be either divisive or entertainingly obnoxious. Be a clown or lead a lynch mob. It also overlaps to some extent with how you get to be a real celebrity, but social media makes the effect more extreme.
- Funes- 6y ago
  It's almost as if the media was taking advantage of our psychological shortcomings and invading our personal lives for profit, at the expense of our well-being, eh? The Internet used to be a refuge from the corporate public sphere; now it's its home.
  - mnky9800n 6y ago
    I was reading a book this morning about mushroom foraging and suddenly realized that I hadn't seen an advert in quite some time because it was a book and not my phone. Then I thought about getting rid of my phone and only reading books from now on. Now I'm posting this on my phone. It's quite annoying how terrible the internet is now. I used to feel comfortable having a conversation in a forum without thinking it was all generated from some AstroTurfing nonsense or would be used to send me highly personalized ads.
    - deleted 6y ago
bpodgursky 6y ago
It would actually be cool if this was a regular thing -- the 15th of the month is officially the Twitter Sabbath, where the blue checks are muted, and only the voices of the masses are heard.
- csunbird 6y ago
  Verified accounts would just create a secondary accounts and ask people to follow them too.
dleslie 6y ago
It'd be a neat feature to allow blocking all messages from verified accounts.
- elicash 6y ago
  I took a list at who on my follow list is checkmarked and besides a few friends, it's mostly reporters. So here's a related but separate point: Something I often do, when I want to retweet a news article in my feed, is find the reporter who broke it and retweet their account rather than the person I was following. I think it's good to incentivize original reporting and therefore good if those folks are given a larger platform. I'd hate for those folks to lose out. That said, I'd also be very curious about impact beyond that. Note: I don't apply this retweet-rule to news that would have been public had the reporter done nothing. For example, on SCOTUS decision days, while I LOVE the work SCOTUSBlog does, I don't particularly care who I retweet for non-analysis breaking news.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    I expect the impact would be that it would be less about news and products and more about what your friends ate for lunch.
- computronus 6y ago
  Sounds like a great opportunity for a browser extension.
deleted 6y ago
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s9w 6y ago
In a similar vein: The social media (in particular Reddit and 4chan) is a different beast on national US holidays, when all the professional opinion steering forces are at rest.
- airstrike 6y ago
  I mean, is 4chan ever really any good?
  - parliament32 6y ago
    It's one of the last places you can make a post without having people trawl though your posting history if they dislike something you said. It's an interesting feature.
    - FalconSensei 6y ago
      Also, no downvoting. Just discussions. On Reddit they use downvotes as a way to disagree
  - FalconSensei 6y ago
    Sometimes better than Reddit
  - s9w 6y ago
    Try it. But don't go to /b/. Watch pol, but only observe for a while. Don't get offended, enjoy the liberty and range of ideas - there are goldmines there regularly. Also you'll read things there first, and a lot of things that will never be on the news. If you ignore the slide and shill threads, it's one of the best places on the net right still.
  - kipchak 6y ago
    yes
  - Izkata 6y ago
    It's how I found out about https://promiseskept.com/ https://promiseskept.com/ and http://www.magapill.com/ http://www.magapill.com/ - lists of things Trump has actually accomplished, without the "Trump is bad" rhetoric. And despite the name of the latter, it's not just a Trump fansite - it's based entirely on links to external sources. Unfortunately, the first one doesn't seem to have sources even though it's organized much better. (And yes, per sibling comment - it was /pol/)
wGeF7H8Z59y985y 6y ago
Having quit social media years ago, I’ve accomplished the same exact thing but on a permanent basis. I highly recommend it. Silence truly is golden.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  I don't fuck around with scrolling-based social media after leaving Facebook. I will regularly do a bit of Hacker News and a bit of Reddit but that's it for me.
- jjice 6y ago
  I've been off Twitter and Facebook for years, but I'm still stuck on HN and Reddit. I'm weening myself off of both of these, but god damn is it hard. Social media really clogs up my brain.
- Andrex 6y ago
  I'm planning on deleting the contents of my profiles across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and Instagram and suspending future posts on August 1st. (I tend to pin things to dates like that.) The Twitter fiasco has me thinking I should move that date up, honestly. My DMs aren't TMZ fodder but I'd still be embarrassed if they were leaked and ended up on some dark web dump somewhere, and that is now a nonzero possibility. Staying on social media these days is becoming a liability, even if you lock down your profile completely and stay private. For me, it's no longer worth it.
klyrs 6y ago
I only read twitter through garbage news sites. Yesterday was almost interesting. Mostly because I remember getting chain mail "from bill gates" claiming that he'd enrich me for passing it on, back in the late 90s. Didn't fall for it then; had to educate grandma. But bitcoin users are that un-savvy today? Time to make popcorn.
- technics256 6y ago
  Honestly, if you would have invested in Microsoft stock then he would've definitely enriched you.
- parliament32 6y ago
  >bitcoin users are that un-savvy today It's unlikely: the crypto world is savage enough that fools and their money are quickly parted. Most of the transfers to the address could easily be the scammers sending themselves money to make it look more legit.
Pineirio 6y ago
What happened? Was it related to the Obama/Bezo/Etc Bitcoin hack?
wonder_er 6y ago
This is fascinating. I just threw together some absolutely atrocious javascript to make this "verified accounts can't tweet" a feature. Fire up the console, and run: ``` javascript var verified = document.querySelectorAll('[aria-label="Verified account"]'); for (var i = 0; i < verified.length; i++) { verified[i].parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement. parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.innerHTML = "" } ``` At least for me, this deletes the DOM nodes for all tweets from verified users in my timeline. I don't want to permanently unfollow all verified users, but having an option to hide all activity associated with those accounts in my timeline? That'd be nice. If anyone who actually knows what they're doing wants to suggest a smarter solution, or make a chrome plugin that does just this, I'd be forever grateful!
- protomyth 6y ago
  Nice. Thinking about it, also deleting the whole right column (trending, who to follow) would really make Twitter a happier place.
  - robbyking 6y ago
    This is why I use StyleBot! I don't customize every page I visit, but it makes a huge difference for sites I view regularly. Here's my custom Hacker News style: https://i.imgur.com/KbP5VAX.png https://i.imgur.com/KbP5VAX.png And Craigslist: https://i.imgur.com/uTyST6P.png https://i.imgur.com/uTyST6P.png
    - moneywoes 6y ago
      What is your configuration
    - iagovar 6y ago
      I use a similar solution, I like to modify the CSS of pages I visit, so I can avoid absurd design choices. Anyway the HN design is almost the pinnacle of perfection to me.
jariel 6y ago
How does any sane, professional person even use Twitter? Do people have jobs? We get quite a ton of email/messages for work, then you maybe have some browsing interest, then personal family messages - how on earth does anyone have time for Twitter, unless they are in the press? I gave it up forever ago. There is absolutely nothing to miss but the tiny dose of dopamine or however it goes. There's nothing there. Nobodies 'Zen Soudbyte' matters, at all.
- protomyth 6y ago
  Tech Support. A lot of companies will keep you in phone hell, but complain at them on Twitter gets a response (well, except Apple - they don't give a damn about anything, looking at you Apple Maps).
  - Macha 6y ago
    I recently closed my Twitter account though. For the last 3 years I'd exclusively used it to complain about companies without adequate support systems elsewhere, but anyone googling me would have come off with a bad impression as the last 2 pages of tweets were complaints and it ranked highly for my name
    - protomyth 6y ago
      Delete the tweets after the issue is resolved. No real need to leave those type of things on Twitter. Also, search is time limited on Twitter, but I cannot remember the exact limit.
- thejohnconway 6y ago
  I'm always a little surprised by these sorts of views of Twitter. In my areas, nearly everyone is there. Twitter is full of Academics, and often the most successful ones are the heaviest users.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    the question is though, do you get anything out of it by reading all that stuff. And I mean actually getting something out of it other than just the feeling you've read something useful? It's not like anyone actually becomes an academic by following academic conversation on twitter, or as if one learns science or maths by reading "mathy" threads on twitter. I think like news even "high-brow" twitter conversations are essentially just infotainment. You can read news for four hours a day and you feel informed, but often you can just drop 90% of it and you don't lose any actual in-depth knowledge.
deleted 6y ago
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qwertox 6y ago
All this drama made me realize that I'm using Twitter just as much as Facebook: not at all.
- SkyPuncher 6y ago
  Same here. I've heard about how much I'm missing out by not using Twitter, yet I've never felt held back by not having a Twitter account.
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    Read any online newspaper and it's basically just the highlights from twitter anyways.
mjayhn 6y ago
Could anyone recommend an easy/good way to quickly mass unfollow a ton of accounts based on the sort of things they post? Is there anything I can use that will just unfollow all the political accounts, or checkmarks or anything like that?
- corin_ 6y ago
  A bit DIY, but muting words could help for stuff like avoiding politics (unless you want to avoid those people even when not tweeting about politics). https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-twitter-mute-options https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-twitter-m...
- striking 6y ago
  I use https://tokimeki-unfollow.glitch.me/ https://tokimeki-unfollow.glitch.me/. You have to unfollow one-by-one, but I think you could get a pretty decent pace going if you really tried. I think the hardest thing here is that you mention "political accounts", and "political" means something different to everyone. So I think this will inevitably be a manual process.
vannevar 6y ago
It wasn't better because verified accounts were locked out; it was better because accounts with large amounts of social capital were locked out. It temporarily reset a social network to a more egalitarian state, before the winner-take-all feedback loops take hold. But left to its own devices, even if those accounts (and their owners) were locked out entirely, the same dynamics would re-assert themselves and new dominating accounts would emerge, absent some ongoing active effort to break the feedback loops that create them.
- devmunchies 6y ago
  this is why i think visible voting (likes, hearts, etc) ruined the internet. It creates teams, draws lines in the sand. Then teams with the most votes thinks that means it's in the right. Otherwise, you have to actually read each comment and think about whether you agree with it instead of lazily appealing to votes.
  - Avicebron 6y ago
    Unfortunately I think intentionally or not the mental stimulus of "winning" - getting lots of likes and retweets, is baked into how these companies have very profitable business models. People feel like they are playing a game for social status, maybe one of the most primal human instincts and they tap into that to drive profit.
    - devmunchies 6y ago
      It's also keeping people from rebelling against the companies (elites) gaining all the profits (I say this as a business owner). It's like not collaborating with another skateboarder or ecologist because they don't share the same political team as me. "Internet teams" is a complete mental construct, taking advantage of xenophobic, tribal tendencies we have innately to protect us in the physical world. I tend to lean towards low-tech anarchist and I have a lot in common with socialists, fascists, and jeffersonian-democrats (anti-federal govt, pro-working man), and even muslims where I'm against central banking or charging interest. But nobody could ever talk about it because "teams".
codegladiator 6y ago
> In 1998, folk Geez can we get to the point ?
- jeffbee 6y ago
  I liked the analogy. The reason Jewel's moronic book existed was not because she had an exceptional cultural contribution to make, but merely because there existed a machine that could put books on the rack at Barnes & Noble, and she was in the machine. The blue checks are the same way: they have the followers because they have the blue check, not because anything they tweet was worth reading.
benlumen 6y ago
"Professionally outraged" is the best term I've heard for most of the blue check accounts. Twitter doesn't need to be (and at one time was not) as toxic as it is. People just learnt to be that way to get traffic to their book or whatever.
justaman 6y ago
I've been on twitter almost as long as its been around. I remember when I first got a blue checkmark after I tied my phone number to my account. At some point a few years back, that checkmark was removed. There was some rumors that accounts following certain controversial people had their checkmark removed.
soneca 6y ago
Well there isn’t any argument for why Twitter was at ”its best” during that hour. It is just a blogspot surfing the wave of the meme that Twitter without verified accounts is better. It is a joke that reflects an insatisfaction with social media (and maybe the world), only that. By this time, the trick is getting old: get a topic that is trending on Twitter, write a few paragraphs giving some context using some humorous language and then print a selection of the funniest/cleverest tweets on topic. That’s it. Why HN crowd give it the front page? I believe because HN crowd shares this zeitgeist that distrusts so called “experts”. It is a vote that we dislike a culture that is steered by influencers and people trying to earn more audience (the currency of this time). I agree with the sentiment, but the article is pretty empty about it, just a meme retweet basically.
- pfraze 6y ago
  Completely agree. The term "experts" in that context frustrates me -- and I think you're highlighting this with "so called" -- because I want experts who actually fulfill that role responsibly. The only expertise which Twitter surfaces is "Twitter Expertise" and the other talents are incidental. We don't want to be steered around by this, so how do we create mass-media that gives us the right properties, and what are those right properties in the first place?
  - efreak 6y ago
    The 'mass' in mass media is not one of the properties. The only mass media you need is a couple newspapers.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
thinkingemote 6y ago
pretty much confirming my hunch that it's not an Eternal September problem with Twitter, but that it started being shit after Oprah and all the other celebrities started using it and it being popular as a source of news. It's not an influx of newbies at all. Social media can be full of literal clueless newcomers - it just needs to be social and not corporate. It's why reddit is dying too - everyone suspects it and the actual effect is less opaque that it's also jumped the shark and is no longer democratically social but corporate / PR influenced.
- qqn 6y ago
  It's a feedback loop though, whatever comes next will draw the crowds, which will draw loud voices, which will draw capitalists to form a structure (and career) out of it. There was a great essay on this topic that shows up here from time to time, using slightly different words: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths.
seebetter 6y ago
They should make Twitter cost $1 per month (non prepaid card) and have the default setting to block all verified users.
root_axis 6y ago
There should be an annual twitter holiday where they shut off all blue checkmarks to celebrate the hapless masses that constitute the bulk of the social capital behind the checkmark itself.
- MarcellusDrum 6y ago
  The fact that it happened suddenly is why it worked. If it was predetermined, all the tweets will be about how verified users couldn't tweet (at already started getting there after a few hours this time as well).
  - root_axis 6y ago
    Good point. Set it up to ask /dev/random to pick one day per year.
    - traes 6y ago
      Everyone would just make an alternate account and not apply for the checkmark on it, although I suppose that might still align with your goals.
parliament32 6y ago
Someone should write a browser extension to disappear (or at least collapse) all tweets from and relating to blue-checked accounts. They're pretty much all either corporate or run by social media managers anyway, not the actual person they're claiming to be.
- basicallydan 6y ago
  Yes, and they should call it Verifhide. EDIT: Also, that's not always the case. The author of the piece herself is Verified and she clearly runs her own account: https://twitter.com/WaterSlicer https://twitter.com/WaterSlicer
zaphar 6y ago
I use https://tweetdeck.twitter.com https://tweetdeck.twitter.com to view twitter. I don't follow verified accounts and I filter out retweets so twitter feels pretty nice to me most days. I didn't even notice the great blue checkmark blackout.
manicdee 6y ago
I just use Tweetbot. The “authentic” Twitter is a mess. Also very few accounts I follow are verified so I don’t know what this “cake” thing is all about.
mullr 6y ago
My recipe for using twitter in psychologically sustainable way: 1) Follow only people you have met in person, or otherwise directly corresponded with. I make very few exceptions to this. 2) Disable all retweets. Twitter doesn't make this easy, but there are tools that do it in bulk. 3) Make sure you're looking at 'latest tweets' mode, so that you only see the content you chose with (1) and (2). Twitter very frustratingly will put you back in 'top tweets' mode periodically, so you'll have to keep an eye on this. It feels like this happens about every 2 weeks but I haven't measured. With this setup, nearly all of the viral BS drops away. I only see tweets in which a person I have some relationship with has taken the time to actually type something. 'quote tweets' are still problematic, but it's not nearly as bad.
- farmerbb 6y ago
  The Tweak New Twitter extension has an option to permanently keep you in latest tweets mode.
- dogfoods 6y ago
  I have a shorter algorithm. 1) Don't.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    O(1), I like it.
rootsudo 6y ago
I never knew this was such a big deal. I don't understand Twitter and the people that really live their lives by it, for it. These people are all my age, and I've never felt so glad to be so disconnected. To not understand the memes or be involved in this Twitter conversation is fantastic.
nickjj 6y ago
Is anyone else unable to Tweet? It says something like "this message looks like it might be automated, it's been blocked to protect our users". I mainly just tweet about tech topics and my account hasn't been compromised. I don't have a blue check mark but I've had an account for years and have it linked to a phone number. This is the first time I've seen such a message but I can't tweet anything. I opened a support ticket but the ticket auto-response said something along the lines of "thanks for the feedback, unfortunately we can't individually reply to every ticket, but be assured your feedback will help Twitter!".
danschumann 6y ago
Experiment: A social network that kicks people off after X,000 followers In a way, you could "cancel" someone by following them, but if enough people don't also follow them. Then you just see their tweets. This is actually kind of an interesting idea. What kind of social dynamics would play? On one hand, you want to see someones tweets, but if you follow them, you may cancel them.
- conscion 6y ago
  I think the "canceling" is too extreme, but the idea of limiting the number of people can follow / be followed by seems interesting, especially in the context of Dunbar's number [0] where a person could only really maintain ~150 connections. Users would then need to decide who's more important to their feed, their best friend's sister or Justin Bieber. It may lead to interesting social dynamics in the same way that Twitters 140-character restriction created new discourse dynamics. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
  - Jaruzel 6y ago
    People would just create multiple accounts. No matter how high you build the wall, someone will always bring a taller ladder.
    - danschumann 6y ago
      Maybe make it cost money to start an account, and you can only follow x00 people whereas it takes x000 to get.. "dissipated"
- traes 6y ago
  Bots could instantly destroy whatever account they want, and people would feel guilty about following someone/something popular and just not do it, which eliminates the point of a follow system except for for personal friends/family. So basically it would make it more like Facebook and anyone with a bit of time/money could almost definitely delete anyone's account they wanted to.
jdeibele 6y ago
If you want to take the trouble to sort people into lists, I reccomend https://github.com/KrauseFx/twitter-unfollow https://github.com/KrauseFx/twitter-unfollow It unfollows everybody you're currently following but moves them onto a list called "Old Follows". You can then move them onto specific lists. The nice thing is that you can look at a list and it will be in chronological order. No "Top view". I also paid for Tweetbot because it has one killer feature: you can filter retweets. That cuts down on the echo chamber.
- wafflesraccoon 6y ago
  You can turn retweets off per account with vanilla Twitter now, it's such a useful feature.
deleted 6y ago
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crazy1van 6y ago
Personally, I'm the opposite. The primary reason I use Twitter is to read blue check marks (and other well known people). Why would I want to know what a random person thinks about an issue when I could hear from people who have built years of clout on a subject? I feel the same way in reverse -- why would anyone care what I think about something when I have no experience or track record on the issue?
ibdf 6y ago
I read the president's tweets as my daily amusement, and the fake Elon Musk's tweets are present in so many of them. This also happens on YT and comment sections on other websites. I've always reported them on twitter, but the reporting categories are so limited that I am sure my report get's lost among a bunch of nonsense.
slim 6y ago
Of course, the author of this unironical post has a verified account
jimnotgym 6y ago
Since the blue tick accounts are essentially broadcasters rather than users on Twitter, I support an occasional reset to zero.
wutbrodo 6y ago
I wonder how much of this was covered by "journalists temporarily can't tweet". I doubt anyone's Twitter experience is made much worse by, eg, Mindy Kaling's tweets.
jacquesm 6y ago
It was the Twitter equivalent of 'million-short'.
fearingreprisal 6y ago
I'm absolutely convinced that the world would be a better, smarter, more civil place if Twitter simply didn't exist at all. The tragedy for me is that whoever hacked Twitter wasted the opportunity to do something that permanently maimed the platform.
bawolff 6y ago
If it was really that great, one would think the article would be able to point out some great things that came out of it. Instead it just points to a bunch of people saying how great it was. I can't help but feel that twitter uses are kind of a self-hating bunch. Its a totally optional site where you can follow whomever you want, and the best thing to happen is for it to break for popular people? I don't understand why people use twitter if they don't want twitter to work. Nobody is forcing you; just quit if you don't like it.

560 points by MindGods 6y ago

I noticed that without the verified accounts, there weren’t a lot of focal points for rage and partisanship to collect. I suspect that’s part of why twitter felt so different during the blue-out.

jeffreyrogers 6y ago

Not sure where I heard it, but someone said: twitter is a mirror pretending to be a window. It's easy to get this experience every day by just not following verified accounts.

jbaudanza 6y ago
I would agree, except that Twitter pushes so much content from people you don't follow while attempting to keep you engaged. I'm talking about the likes, retweets, comments, etc. If twitter did only display content from people you followed, it would actually be quite pleasant to read. I created a Chrome extension to do this, but the recent redesign broke it and I haven't figured out how to get it to work again. The new css/class system is rather opaque.
- insin 6y ago
  I wrote an extension which does that; it keeps you on the Latest Tweets timeline and moves retweets to their own fake timeline, so by default you only see original tweets and quote tweets from people you follow: https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-twitter https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-twitter I've been using Twitter this way for years and consequently find the unmodified version completely unusable, so it was either learn how to do it on New Twitter or quit using it at all.
  - delecti 6y ago
    That seems redundant. You can already turn off seeing retweets from accounts you follow, and the "latest tweets" timeline is already pretty sticky. I've never had it revert to the default "home" timeline across any computer or phone app install.
    - mjcl 6y ago
      My experience has been about once a month the iOS app (phone & tablet) will revert from Latest to Top. It will show an easy-to-miss toast message saying "You're now seeing top tweets first."
      - FreezerburnV 6y ago
        Once a month sounds nice. Mine likes to revert within a week :) (for the times I actually use twitter more than a couple times a month)
  - jbaudanza 6y ago
    This is great, thank you! Installed!
- asicsp 6y ago
  I use separate private lists and only visit them instead of home page. No content pushing from Twitter, so far.
- jabroni_salad 6y ago
  I use alternative applications. Tweetdeck on desktop and Flamingo for android. Among other things, they can view my follows in chronological order with no algorithm nonsense.
- jekri99 6y ago
  I agree. Got sick of the pushing. Switched to going to the source, skipping social media which is just “Mechanical Turk for dumb shit”. Discord/Slack groups for projects that have them. Email is working great for connecting to academics and open source communities that don’t give a shit about Slack. Twitter and Facebook seem anachronistic and archaic to me. If I wanted to know what the average American thinks about daily life right now, I’ll write in my journal or ask my neighbor.
- Terr_ 6y ago
  > from people you don't follow To try to recover the metaphor: A television pretending to be a window. Which... isn't a new problem.
dleslie 6y ago
Not following is not sufficient; all of the people you follow must also avoid verified accounts or at least not like or retweet them.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  You can mute the verified accounts you don't like.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    I cannot easily mute them all, and simply not following them won't work because I cannot be assured that my peers won't retweet or like them.
Shivetya 6y ago
twitter is not mirror, it is another stage controlled by political actors who use it in a circular means to support stories pushed through other media, especially the news. People bemoan corporate influence over the internet but completely ignore the fact the political parties exercise even far more influence because unlike a business they have sycophants within many organizations and it all is directed as a whole. the anger in today's society is nearly all generated by these groups which control so much of the media and social sites that you cannot avoid it. they poison every conversation so when they go missing it can be deafening
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
"Just only follow the accounts that interest you" is the lie we were all fed when we were forced off RSS and onto Twitter. It's just not true, politics and verified accounts creep through the woodwork like a silverfish infestation sooner or later no matter who you follow. Either by algorithm or by someone you followed for a different reason turning their account into a politics account. Twitter could have a global switch to turn all this stuff off but chooses not to because the power to show you this stuff is more desirable than providing you a stress free space.

api 6y ago

I posted this to some friends: PSA: Twitter has been very badly hacked. Apparently their internal systems were compromised allowing posts as all kinds of accounts. So... if your favorite celebrity, business leader, intellectual, or politician says something stupid... hmm... actually never mind. I don't see any difference between hacked Twitter and normal Twitter. Carry on.

sambroner 6y ago

My twitter feed was pretty slow without the Blue Checks. The dialogue was way more in the middle. There was suddenly little conversation about today's meme (cake? idk.) The whole thing felt pretty civilized. It made me realize how much content these twitter blue checks are creating. It's crazy.

fernandotakai 6y ago
not only that but how partisan blue checks are. i felt the same: a lot of middle ground conversation, but nobody was calling out each other with quoted RTs.
- api 6y ago
  That's how you get to be a Twitter celebrity: be either divisive or entertainingly obnoxious. Be a clown or lead a lynch mob. It also overlaps to some extent with how you get to be a real celebrity, but social media makes the effect more extreme.
Funes- 6y ago
It's almost as if the media was taking advantage of our psychological shortcomings and invading our personal lives for profit, at the expense of our well-being, eh? The Internet used to be a refuge from the corporate public sphere; now it's its home.
- mnky9800n 6y ago
  I was reading a book this morning about mushroom foraging and suddenly realized that I hadn't seen an advert in quite some time because it was a book and not my phone. Then I thought about getting rid of my phone and only reading books from now on. Now I'm posting this on my phone. It's quite annoying how terrible the internet is now. I used to feel comfortable having a conversation in a forum without thinking it was all generated from some AstroTurfing nonsense or would be used to send me highly personalized ads.
  - deleted 6y ago

bpodgursky 6y ago

It would actually be cool if this was a regular thing -- the 15th of the month is officially the Twitter Sabbath, where the blue checks are muted, and only the voices of the masses are heard.

csunbird 6y ago
Verified accounts would just create a secondary accounts and ask people to follow them too.

dleslie 6y ago

It'd be a neat feature to allow blocking all messages from verified accounts.

elicash 6y ago
I took a list at who on my follow list is checkmarked and besides a few friends, it's mostly reporters. So here's a related but separate point: Something I often do, when I want to retweet a news article in my feed, is find the reporter who broke it and retweet their account rather than the person I was following. I think it's good to incentivize original reporting and therefore good if those folks are given a larger platform. I'd hate for those folks to lose out. That said, I'd also be very curious about impact beyond that. Note: I don't apply this retweet-rule to news that would have been public had the reporter done nothing. For example, on SCOTUS decision days, while I LOVE the work SCOTUSBlog does, I don't particularly care who I retweet for non-analysis breaking news.
- dleslie 6y ago
  I expect the impact would be that it would be less about news and products and more about what your friends ate for lunch.
computronus 6y ago
Sounds like a great opportunity for a browser extension.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

s9w 6y ago

In a similar vein: The social media (in particular Reddit and 4chan) is a different beast on national US holidays, when all the professional opinion steering forces are at rest.

airstrike 6y ago
I mean, is 4chan ever really any good?
- parliament32 6y ago
  It's one of the last places you can make a post without having people trawl though your posting history if they dislike something you said. It's an interesting feature.
  - FalconSensei 6y ago
    Also, no downvoting. Just discussions. On Reddit they use downvotes as a way to disagree
- FalconSensei 6y ago
  Sometimes better than Reddit
- s9w 6y ago
  Try it. But don't go to /b/. Watch pol, but only observe for a while. Don't get offended, enjoy the liberty and range of ideas - there are goldmines there regularly. Also you'll read things there first, and a lot of things that will never be on the news. If you ignore the slide and shill threads, it's one of the best places on the net right still.
- kipchak 6y ago
  yes
- Izkata 6y ago
  It's how I found out about https://promiseskept.com/ https://promiseskept.com/ and http://www.magapill.com/ http://www.magapill.com/ - lists of things Trump has actually accomplished, without the "Trump is bad" rhetoric. And despite the name of the latter, it's not just a Trump fansite - it's based entirely on links to external sources. Unfortunately, the first one doesn't seem to have sources even though it's organized much better. (And yes, per sibling comment - it was /pol/)

wGeF7H8Z59y985y 6y ago

Having quit social media years ago, I’ve accomplished the same exact thing but on a permanent basis. I highly recommend it. Silence truly is golden.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
I don't fuck around with scrolling-based social media after leaving Facebook. I will regularly do a bit of Hacker News and a bit of Reddit but that's it for me.
jjice 6y ago
I've been off Twitter and Facebook for years, but I'm still stuck on HN and Reddit. I'm weening myself off of both of these, but god damn is it hard. Social media really clogs up my brain.
Andrex 6y ago
I'm planning on deleting the contents of my profiles across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and Instagram and suspending future posts on August 1st. (I tend to pin things to dates like that.) The Twitter fiasco has me thinking I should move that date up, honestly. My DMs aren't TMZ fodder but I'd still be embarrassed if they were leaked and ended up on some dark web dump somewhere, and that is now a nonzero possibility. Staying on social media these days is becoming a liability, even if you lock down your profile completely and stay private. For me, it's no longer worth it.

klyrs 6y ago

I only read twitter through garbage news sites. Yesterday was almost interesting. Mostly because I remember getting chain mail "from bill gates" claiming that he'd enrich me for passing it on, back in the late 90s. Didn't fall for it then; had to educate grandma. But bitcoin users are that un-savvy today? Time to make popcorn.

technics256 6y ago
Honestly, if you would have invested in Microsoft stock then he would've definitely enriched you.
parliament32 6y ago
>bitcoin users are that un-savvy today It's unlikely: the crypto world is savage enough that fools and their money are quickly parted. Most of the transfers to the address could easily be the scammers sending themselves money to make it look more legit.

Pineirio 6y ago

What happened? Was it related to the Obama/Bezo/Etc Bitcoin hack?

wonder_er 6y ago

This is fascinating. I just threw together some absolutely atrocious javascript to make this "verified accounts can't tweet" a feature. Fire up the console, and run: ``` javascript var verified = document.querySelectorAll('[aria-label="Verified account"]'); for (var i = 0; i < verified.length; i++) { verified[i].parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement. parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.innerHTML = "" } ``` At least for me, this deletes the DOM nodes for all tweets from verified users in my timeline. I don't want to permanently unfollow all verified users, but having an option to hide all activity associated with those accounts in my timeline? That'd be nice. If anyone who actually knows what they're doing wants to suggest a smarter solution, or make a chrome plugin that does just this, I'd be forever grateful!

protomyth 6y ago
Nice. Thinking about it, also deleting the whole right column (trending, who to follow) would really make Twitter a happier place.
- robbyking 6y ago
  This is why I use StyleBot! I don't customize every page I visit, but it makes a huge difference for sites I view regularly. Here's my custom Hacker News style: https://i.imgur.com/KbP5VAX.png https://i.imgur.com/KbP5VAX.png And Craigslist: https://i.imgur.com/uTyST6P.png https://i.imgur.com/uTyST6P.png
  - moneywoes 6y ago
    What is your configuration
  - iagovar 6y ago
    I use a similar solution, I like to modify the CSS of pages I visit, so I can avoid absurd design choices. Anyway the HN design is almost the pinnacle of perfection to me.

jariel 6y ago

How does any sane, professional person even use Twitter? Do people have jobs? We get quite a ton of email/messages for work, then you maybe have some browsing interest, then personal family messages - how on earth does anyone have time for Twitter, unless they are in the press? I gave it up forever ago. There is absolutely nothing to miss but the tiny dose of dopamine or however it goes. There's nothing there. Nobodies 'Zen Soudbyte' matters, at all.

protomyth 6y ago
Tech Support. A lot of companies will keep you in phone hell, but complain at them on Twitter gets a response (well, except Apple - they don't give a damn about anything, looking at you Apple Maps).
- Macha 6y ago
  I recently closed my Twitter account though. For the last 3 years I'd exclusively used it to complain about companies without adequate support systems elsewhere, but anyone googling me would have come off with a bad impression as the last 2 pages of tweets were complaints and it ranked highly for my name
  - protomyth 6y ago
    Delete the tweets after the issue is resolved. No real need to leave those type of things on Twitter. Also, search is time limited on Twitter, but I cannot remember the exact limit.
thejohnconway 6y ago
I'm always a little surprised by these sorts of views of Twitter. In my areas, nearly everyone is there. Twitter is full of Academics, and often the most successful ones are the heaviest users.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  the question is though, do you get anything out of it by reading all that stuff. And I mean actually getting something out of it other than just the feeling you've read something useful? It's not like anyone actually becomes an academic by following academic conversation on twitter, or as if one learns science or maths by reading "mathy" threads on twitter. I think like news even "high-brow" twitter conversations are essentially just infotainment. You can read news for four hours a day and you feel informed, but often you can just drop 90% of it and you don't lose any actual in-depth knowledge.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

qwertox 6y ago

All this drama made me realize that I'm using Twitter just as much as Facebook: not at all.

SkyPuncher 6y ago
Same here. I've heard about how much I'm missing out by not using Twitter, yet I've never felt held back by not having a Twitter account.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  Read any online newspaper and it's basically just the highlights from twitter anyways.

mjayhn 6y ago

Could anyone recommend an easy/good way to quickly mass unfollow a ton of accounts based on the sort of things they post? Is there anything I can use that will just unfollow all the political accounts, or checkmarks or anything like that?

corin_ 6y ago
A bit DIY, but muting words could help for stuff like avoiding politics (unless you want to avoid those people even when not tweeting about politics). https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-twitter-mute-options https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-twitter-m...
striking 6y ago
I use https://tokimeki-unfollow.glitch.me/ https://tokimeki-unfollow.glitch.me/. You have to unfollow one-by-one, but I think you could get a pretty decent pace going if you really tried. I think the hardest thing here is that you mention "political accounts", and "political" means something different to everyone. So I think this will inevitably be a manual process.

vannevar 6y ago

It wasn't better because verified accounts were locked out; it was better because accounts with large amounts of social capital were locked out. It temporarily reset a social network to a more egalitarian state, before the winner-take-all feedback loops take hold. But left to its own devices, even if those accounts (and their owners) were locked out entirely, the same dynamics would re-assert themselves and new dominating accounts would emerge, absent some ongoing active effort to break the feedback loops that create them.

devmunchies 6y ago
this is why i think visible voting (likes, hearts, etc) ruined the internet. It creates teams, draws lines in the sand. Then teams with the most votes thinks that means it's in the right. Otherwise, you have to actually read each comment and think about whether you agree with it instead of lazily appealing to votes.
- Avicebron 6y ago
  Unfortunately I think intentionally or not the mental stimulus of "winning" - getting lots of likes and retweets, is baked into how these companies have very profitable business models. People feel like they are playing a game for social status, maybe one of the most primal human instincts and they tap into that to drive profit.
  - devmunchies 6y ago
    It's also keeping people from rebelling against the companies (elites) gaining all the profits (I say this as a business owner). It's like not collaborating with another skateboarder or ecologist because they don't share the same political team as me. "Internet teams" is a complete mental construct, taking advantage of xenophobic, tribal tendencies we have innately to protect us in the physical world. I tend to lean towards low-tech anarchist and I have a lot in common with socialists, fascists, and jeffersonian-democrats (anti-federal govt, pro-working man), and even muslims where I'm against central banking or charging interest. But nobody could ever talk about it because "teams".

codegladiator 6y ago

> In 1998, folk Geez can we get to the point ?

jeffbee 6y ago
I liked the analogy. The reason Jewel's moronic book existed was not because she had an exceptional cultural contribution to make, but merely because there existed a machine that could put books on the rack at Barnes & Noble, and she was in the machine. The blue checks are the same way: they have the followers because they have the blue check, not because anything they tweet was worth reading.

benlumen 6y ago

"Professionally outraged" is the best term I've heard for most of the blue check accounts. Twitter doesn't need to be (and at one time was not) as toxic as it is. People just learnt to be that way to get traffic to their book or whatever.

justaman 6y ago

I've been on twitter almost as long as its been around. I remember when I first got a blue checkmark after I tied my phone number to my account. At some point a few years back, that checkmark was removed. There was some rumors that accounts following certain controversial people had their checkmark removed.

soneca 6y ago

Well there isn’t any argument for why Twitter was at ”its best” during that hour. It is just a blogspot surfing the wave of the meme that Twitter without verified accounts is better. It is a joke that reflects an insatisfaction with social media (and maybe the world), only that. By this time, the trick is getting old: get a topic that is trending on Twitter, write a few paragraphs giving some context using some humorous language and then print a selection of the funniest/cleverest tweets on topic. That’s it. Why HN crowd give it the front page? I believe because HN crowd shares this zeitgeist that distrusts so called “experts”. It is a vote that we dislike a culture that is steered by influencers and people trying to earn more audience (the currency of this time). I agree with the sentiment, but the article is pretty empty about it, just a meme retweet basically.

pfraze 6y ago
Completely agree. The term "experts" in that context frustrates me -- and I think you're highlighting this with "so called" -- because I want experts who actually fulfill that role responsibly. The only expertise which Twitter surfaces is "Twitter Expertise" and the other talents are incidental. We don't want to be steered around by this, so how do we create mass-media that gives us the right properties, and what are those right properties in the first place?
- efreak 6y ago
  The 'mass' in mass media is not one of the properties. The only mass media you need is a couple newspapers.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

thinkingemote 6y ago

pretty much confirming my hunch that it's not an Eternal September problem with Twitter, but that it started being shit after Oprah and all the other celebrities started using it and it being popular as a source of news. It's not an influx of newbies at all. Social media can be full of literal clueless newcomers - it just needs to be social and not corporate. It's why reddit is dying too - everyone suspects it and the actual effect is less opaque that it's also jumped the shark and is no longer democratically social but corporate / PR influenced.

qqn 6y ago
It's a feedback loop though, whatever comes next will draw the crowds, which will draw loud voices, which will draw capitalists to form a structure (and career) out of it. There was a great essay on this topic that shows up here from time to time, using slightly different words: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths.

seebetter 6y ago

They should make Twitter cost $1 per month (non prepaid card) and have the default setting to block all verified users.

root_axis 6y ago

There should be an annual twitter holiday where they shut off all blue checkmarks to celebrate the hapless masses that constitute the bulk of the social capital behind the checkmark itself.

MarcellusDrum 6y ago
The fact that it happened suddenly is why it worked. If it was predetermined, all the tweets will be about how verified users couldn't tweet (at already started getting there after a few hours this time as well).
- root_axis 6y ago
  Good point. Set it up to ask /dev/random to pick one day per year.
  - traes 6y ago
    Everyone would just make an alternate account and not apply for the checkmark on it, although I suppose that might still align with your goals.

parliament32 6y ago

Someone should write a browser extension to disappear (or at least collapse) all tweets from and relating to blue-checked accounts. They're pretty much all either corporate or run by social media managers anyway, not the actual person they're claiming to be.

basicallydan 6y ago
Yes, and they should call it Verifhide. EDIT: Also, that's not always the case. The author of the piece herself is Verified and she clearly runs her own account: https://twitter.com/WaterSlicer https://twitter.com/WaterSlicer

zaphar 6y ago

I use https://tweetdeck.twitter.com https://tweetdeck.twitter.com to view twitter. I don't follow verified accounts and I filter out retweets so twitter feels pretty nice to me most days. I didn't even notice the great blue checkmark blackout.

manicdee 6y ago

I just use Tweetbot. The “authentic” Twitter is a mess. Also very few accounts I follow are verified so I don’t know what this “cake” thing is all about.

mullr 6y ago

My recipe for using twitter in psychologically sustainable way: 1) Follow only people you have met in person, or otherwise directly corresponded with. I make very few exceptions to this. 2) Disable all retweets. Twitter doesn't make this easy, but there are tools that do it in bulk. 3) Make sure you're looking at 'latest tweets' mode, so that you only see the content you chose with (1) and (2). Twitter very frustratingly will put you back in 'top tweets' mode periodically, so you'll have to keep an eye on this. It feels like this happens about every 2 weeks but I haven't measured. With this setup, nearly all of the viral BS drops away. I only see tweets in which a person I have some relationship with has taken the time to actually type something. 'quote tweets' are still problematic, but it's not nearly as bad.

farmerbb 6y ago
The Tweak New Twitter extension has an option to permanently keep you in latest tweets mode.
dogfoods 6y ago
I have a shorter algorithm. 1) Don't.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  O(1), I like it.

rootsudo 6y ago

I never knew this was such a big deal. I don't understand Twitter and the people that really live their lives by it, for it. These people are all my age, and I've never felt so glad to be so disconnected. To not understand the memes or be involved in this Twitter conversation is fantastic.

nickjj 6y ago

Is anyone else unable to Tweet? It says something like "this message looks like it might be automated, it's been blocked to protect our users". I mainly just tweet about tech topics and my account hasn't been compromised. I don't have a blue check mark but I've had an account for years and have it linked to a phone number. This is the first time I've seen such a message but I can't tweet anything. I opened a support ticket but the ticket auto-response said something along the lines of "thanks for the feedback, unfortunately we can't individually reply to every ticket, but be assured your feedback will help Twitter!".

danschumann 6y ago

Experiment: A social network that kicks people off after X,000 followers In a way, you could "cancel" someone by following them, but if enough people don't also follow them. Then you just see their tweets. This is actually kind of an interesting idea. What kind of social dynamics would play? On one hand, you want to see someones tweets, but if you follow them, you may cancel them.

conscion 6y ago
I think the "canceling" is too extreme, but the idea of limiting the number of people can follow / be followed by seems interesting, especially in the context of Dunbar's number [0] where a person could only really maintain ~150 connections. Users would then need to decide who's more important to their feed, their best friend's sister or Justin Bieber. It may lead to interesting social dynamics in the same way that Twitters 140-character restriction created new discourse dynamics. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
- Jaruzel 6y ago
  People would just create multiple accounts. No matter how high you build the wall, someone will always bring a taller ladder.
  - danschumann 6y ago
    Maybe make it cost money to start an account, and you can only follow x00 people whereas it takes x000 to get.. "dissipated"
traes 6y ago
Bots could instantly destroy whatever account they want, and people would feel guilty about following someone/something popular and just not do it, which eliminates the point of a follow system except for for personal friends/family. So basically it would make it more like Facebook and anyone with a bit of time/money could almost definitely delete anyone's account they wanted to.

jdeibele 6y ago

If you want to take the trouble to sort people into lists, I reccomend https://github.com/KrauseFx/twitter-unfollow https://github.com/KrauseFx/twitter-unfollow It unfollows everybody you're currently following but moves them onto a list called "Old Follows". You can then move them onto specific lists. The nice thing is that you can look at a list and it will be in chronological order. No "Top view". I also paid for Tweetbot because it has one killer feature: you can filter retweets. That cuts down on the echo chamber.

wafflesraccoon 6y ago
You can turn retweets off per account with vanilla Twitter now, it's such a useful feature.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

crazy1van 6y ago

Personally, I'm the opposite. The primary reason I use Twitter is to read blue check marks (and other well known people). Why would I want to know what a random person thinks about an issue when I could hear from people who have built years of clout on a subject? I feel the same way in reverse -- why would anyone care what I think about something when I have no experience or track record on the issue?

ibdf 6y ago

I read the president's tweets as my daily amusement, and the fake Elon Musk's tweets are present in so many of them. This also happens on YT and comment sections on other websites. I've always reported them on twitter, but the reporting categories are so limited that I am sure my report get's lost among a bunch of nonsense.

slim 6y ago

Of course, the author of this unironical post has a verified account

jimnotgym 6y ago

Since the blue tick accounts are essentially broadcasters rather than users on Twitter, I support an occasional reset to zero.

wutbrodo 6y ago

I wonder how much of this was covered by "journalists temporarily can't tweet". I doubt anyone's Twitter experience is made much worse by, eg, Mindy Kaling's tweets.

jacquesm 6y ago

It was the Twitter equivalent of 'million-short'.

fearingreprisal 6y ago

I'm absolutely convinced that the world would be a better, smarter, more civil place if Twitter simply didn't exist at all. The tragedy for me is that whoever hacked Twitter wasted the opportunity to do something that permanently maimed the platform.

bawolff 6y ago

If it was really that great, one would think the article would be able to point out some great things that came out of it. Instead it just points to a bunch of people saying how great it was. I can't help but feel that twitter uses are kind of a self-hating bunch. Its a totally optional site where you can follow whomever you want, and the best thing to happen is for it to break for popular people? I don't understand why people use twitter if they don't want twitter to work. Nobody is forcing you; just quit if you don't like it.