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To my mind, trying this hard to circumvent a platform's huge and seemingly irremovable flaws instead of ditching it for good is a very unreasonable option. I'd
by Funes- 6y ago
To my mind, trying this hard to circumvent a platform's huge and seemingly irremovable flaws instead of ditching it for good is a very unreasonable option. I'd say quit Twitter abruptly, not gradually--here's how:
- Do you want to follow the news? Try selecting reliable news outlets or aggregators (like HN) guided by your own criteria, so you can check their websites on a regular basis and stay up to date, if you're interested in that--I'd personally recommend sticking to local news.
- Do you want to follow specific people that publish content you find interesting on the Internet? Follow their personal websites or repositories.
- Do you want to publish content on the Internet yourself? Host a personal website. If you don't want to pay, consider using a decentralized option (Beaker Browser, .onion site, I2P, ZeroNet, etcetera).
That's it. Goodbye social media. RSS, bookmarks, and our good old memory are our best allies.
- acidburnNSA 6y agoWhat if I want to ping the most famous researcher in my field and get a quick response? And then get recruited by an observer for asking such an insightful question? This actually happens on twitter.
- motohagiography 6y agoArguably this is analogous to asking how will you hit a payout on a slot machine if you don't play. It sort of makes sense if as someone who plays slot machines literally has no more productive use for their capital than the sensation of losing it and the hope from occasionally "winning," just as someone on twitter has no more productive use of their surplus time. Sure, it's fun, and you can take it to the bathroom with you so you don't need to wear a diaper like you might need to at a casino, but it's an impoverishing and inferior vice. Twitter and social media platforms that we compare to slot machines should be defined as a new form or class called Strange Games, wherein the only winning move is not to play.
- acidburnNSA 6y agoI disagree only because I've had real contacts with personal giants on twitter dozens of times and never won anything at a casino. While I do spend more time on twitter, I believe this effect is more common than your analogy allows. People into fringe academic topics are likely to see this effect more than people @ing along and kanye.
- ebiester 6y agoSo, assuming I've built a site, how do I tell other people that I've written something? It turns out, talking with other people who are interested in the things I write about is important in the initial stages of alerting people who may later choose to follow my website. Where do these people talk? Today, that's Twitter. (To a lesser extent, HN. Reddit has a community, but most of those communities frown on submitting your own content.) Creators stay on twitter because it is a free way to announce to interested parties that you have made A Thing. Any other service that has sufficient people will end up having the same problems we see on Twitter.
- zaptrem 6y agoAll of that is incredibly inconvenient and 99% of users who aren't ye brilliant few HN users won't know how/won't bother. Content discoverability goes down the toilet as well, so information democratization suddenly moves backward a decade.
- patrickaljord 6y agoIs it even possible to avoid Twitter though? Many frontpage articles from HN to mainstream news such as CNN consist in single links to a tweet. So I inevitably end up clicking on it like many people and there you go. Back on Twitter.