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Twitter's subscription service might cost $3 per month
- forgotpwd16 5y agoWill their support stop being non-existent with this service or someone will still be in danger of having their account suspended for no, as seen in the monthly r/Twitter mega-threads, significant reason?
- rootsudo 5y agoI never knew we could monetize hate as a service (HaaS.)
- smitty1e 5y agoHate As Subscription Service (HASS), for our German speakers.
- rootsudo 5y agoOh, that is good.
- ergot_vacation 5y agoThis is a glorious turn of phrase. Gotta save that for later.
- sweetheart 5y agoSo wait, does this also come with all tracking disabled? That would be awesome. Are they trying to test the waters with regard to alternate monetization strategies, or this is simply a way to doubly monetize subscribed users, via the monthly fee _and_ their data?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoImagine paying $3 to a site that is largely driven by trolls, agitators, bad actors, foreign intelligence, ads, and corporate shills. Twitter and others add gasoline to every single sensitive issue in the countries that use it.
- millerm 5y agoImagine if you could filter all of that out and only see other paid subscriber content. That would get a rid of a lot of trolls and bots. Not all, but a LOT.
- nashashmi 5y agoNow imagine a site that only gave you the comments you agreed with. And every time you were looking for something you only saw information you agreed with. Now imagine Facebook or google news.
- holler 5y agoeven better, imagine they openly dictated what was agreeable
- rconti 5y agoSo it would be more like Facebook (assuming you avoid joining FB hate groups and reading the comments on publicly-shared content).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ergot_vacation 5y agoAnyone who pays for Twitter gets exactly what they deserve. Twitter isn't an enemy of the right or left, they're an enemy of humanity. Literally a machine that monetizes human suffering, and amplifies it to increase revenue.
- encryptluks2 5y agoAnd federated services will continue to be free and easier to cater your timeline to what you want to see and not a bunch of junk.
- edoceo 5y agoWhich federated protocol can we (well, me) use rather than T? Micro.blog? Matrix? ActivityPub? I keep looking but I still don't have a good answer. I'd pay $30/mo for a good, FOSS, Federated Protocol to compete with T (and the others)
- encryptluks2 5y agoAre you looking for a protocol or client? For protocol, ActivityPub works for my needs currently. For clients, there are some really good ones on F-Droid.
- Siira 5y agoRSS. Look at https://www.overcomingbias.com/ https://www.overcomingbias.com/ as an example of a microblog. Tweeter’s main selling point is the lack of friction, but this is also why it’s so low quality.
- edoceo 5y agoYea, I love RSS - but how do we get the twitter like (you know, only the good parts) in RSS?
- fragileone 5y agoMastodon is the Fediverse Twitter alternative.
- dbish 5y agoI really don't see anyone but the power users being willing to pay. What's that TAM then? There are only around 250k verified users, you can probably use them as a proxy for power users, your pro customers. That doesn't seem very large. Though this only really would be counting power writers, not necessarily folks who consume but don't tweet.
- dbish 5y agoThe feature that looks interesting and could be useful depending on implementation is collections if they are easier to share and link to as well as organize. Tweets are hard to sort through and organize today, would be cool if they offer a way to do things like pin a collection of your top ranked tweets or favorited tweets, rather then the current mode of pinning only one tweet. I tried creating something to help with this but it's hard to get traction if it's not natively supported (had a few users), though that could also just be the very bare boned state of the site, gotta be embarrassed by your first version right :) http://tweetlights.com/ http://tweetlights.com/
- chomp 5y agoI just cannot see myself spending money on a site so full of hate. Everyone these days has a take on everything that, when condensed, is just so emotionally distilled that it twists me up after maybe 10 minutes of browsing. I have the engagement algorithm blues.
- the-dude 5y agoAre you spewing your hate of Twitter here on HN? Isn't that ironic?
- rconti 5y agoThis is the problem with a default-public-broadcast site that is entirely driven by the engagement metric of comments. It's like browsing Facebook but only reading public articles; no groups, no friend's cat photos. No default-friends-only.
- foepys 5y agoOne the one side I really miss the BB-style format where the thread with the newest comment was on top but on the other side discoverability of legitimately good content was a mess. "Solving" this issue with automation will most likely just recreate the already existing engagement algorithms. Strict moderation and more importantly curation is probably the only way to make it work but who's going to pay for this at scale?
- svantana 5y agoFor me, the public-ness is what makes it compelling. IMO what it lacks is an HN/reddit-style downvote, that would immediately send the vile comments to oblivion. Then perhaps you could choose to only let users with positive karma reply etc. HN & Reddit does have some rude/know-it-all comments but I don't see much of the real nasty stuff.
- boomer918 5y agoI think this is good. Any free resource is bound to be abused and overrun with spam and trolls. If you have to pay to use it, a lot of this becomes disincentivised. Free to read, pay to post, it's perfect.
- adhoc32 5y agoTo all complaining that twitter is full of hate. Have you ever tried using twitter without the search feature, or clicking on hashtags? I'm following a lot of interesting people and I find the content fascinating.
- kingsuper20 5y agoThe best way to improve it would be an optional UI that didn't show comments to posts. Everyone time I read those, and I can't help it sometimes, I lose a little more faith in humanity. The real rabbit hole is to click on a particularly pungent response's source. It's always some guy with tens per day rude bon mots to his favorite enemies.
- pochamago 5y agoI strongly recommend using any unofficial Twitter app. My experience significantly improved once I stopped seeing "liked" tweets from people I follow. I don't even understand what the point of that is, if they wanted to share those with their followers they'd retweet it
- JD557 5y agoI think using the tweetdeck interface (https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/) also helps, since it doesn't show recommended tweets.
- AznHisoka 5y agoFor me, Twitter is immensely useful only if I use the search feature.
- gsjjsjsbsb 5y agoIf you follow any trans people there will be hate in the replies. Also most prominent cis women.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y agoI follow a carefully curated list of people in my field but invariable hate gets on my feed. People slip and can't resist liking a tweet about a recent controversy, or giving their sociopolitical hot-take, and then you get exposed to it even when they tweet 99% of the time about math. I agree the content can be absolutely invaluable and fascinating otherwise, but I just couldn't deal with the seeping toxicity in the end.
- smitty1e 5y agoAfter ~220K tweets, and the feeling that Twitter manipulates the follows/retweets along ideological lines, I find it hard to care much about the service. While a technically impressive site, @jack has long since stabbed any user loyalty in the heart.
- smoldesu 5y ago> Undo Tweet feature Boy, a lot of people would probably jump at the chance to spend $3/month on cancel-insurance.
- seg_lol 5y agoHow about an AI seatbelt? Hello, this is your personal twitter bot. This will not land well and will mostly like blow up in your face. Are you sure? Or Please blow in your Alcohol Sensor FIDO Key to continue posting for 99¢, 3.99 if you are drunk.
- seg_lol 5y agoNot snark, they should charge by the shtpost. Ignoring the intended and unintended consequences around such a market.
- ergot_vacation 5y agoYou're supposed to tax the things you want less of though. Shitposts are the only worthwhile thing on the site.
- mastrsushi 5y ago>Twitter Blue would let you undo tweets and save tweets in collections So if you pay them you'll get features you should already have, got it.
- msrenee 5y agoJust like YouTube. At least they're adding features and not just taking them away and making you pay to get them back.
- mastrsushi 5y agoYouTube gets rid of ads on their premium plan. Blocking ads eats into their model, so it's understandable. Twitter gets rid of features that in my, and I'm sure many others opinion should be given capabilities.
- msrenee 5y agoI was more irritated that they took away the ability to let videos play with the app closed and then immediately brought it back as a premium feature. And the ads have gotten ridiculous. That wasn't a big deal until they completely changed their suggested video algorithm and now all I get is "top ten" and "you won't believe this". If someone links me a video, I might watch it. I don't access the website for any other reason anymore.
- mastrsushi 5y agoI don't like how they don't let users play videos on the background either. That's definitely a sign they want to cash in on people who use it as a Spotify alternative. But smartphones gave Google a chance to take control of things like that and ad block. They are a business first afterall, that's what they do. When Spotify came about, I found the idea of paying for music streaming to be ridiculous. But their artist recommendation algorithm I found to be really helpful. I agree on the way YouTube handles their recommendations. It seems less focused on the users interests and more like one big tabloid of click holes. I started using the site back in early 2006 when I was 11 years old. I grew up there, but like anything that becomes commercially successful, it's long out of touch with it's users. The internet as a whole has become less community focused. I worry future generations won't realize it used to be a place without hypnotizing algorithms. That their used to be cool niche forums and blogs. But the web failed to standardize itself to be more organized. Instead we have 5 or 6 major "platforms" that everyone's boxed into. I think they will still believe in freedom online. But I really do think they're becoming increasingly unaware of the mood controlling aspects of social media. Being born into something doesn't help.
- paulpauper 5y agowhy cant twitter do something about verified accounts being hijacked to promote bitcoin scams.
- ipaddr 5y agoThat really was Elon Musk pumping and dumping. No hijacking needed.
- ergot_vacation 5y agoMaybe he was inspired by the hack. "Whew, finally got my account back from those nutjobs! Imagine thinking you could make good money pumping crypto. Unless..."
- ilamont 5y agoI’d pay to not see ads, true reverse chronological view of accounts I follow, and editing features. Collections? No thanks.
- ipaddr 5y agoI'd pay to see the ads but hide the hate.
- dstaley 5y agoI honestly couldn't come up with a less compelling set of paid features if I tried. I would love to see things like no ads/promoted tweets, premium API access for third-party devs, live timeline streaming (more like what Tweetdeck does [or did]), higher quality media, and the ability to always keep the reverse chronological timeline.
- d--b 5y agoAre advertisers really paying that much?
- jollybean 5y agoA subscription is long overdue. Twitter has a smaller base than Insta or FB - but part of that base uses it professionally i.e. journalists etc.. I can't say these features are 'it', however, the opportunity for price discrimination has been there for a decade surely. For a certain segment of users, $X is nothing, and probably can be expensed.
- 1270018080 5y agoIsn't Twitter developing some new social media site that isn't so algorithmically echo chamber driven like all others? I could've sworn I read an article about it a few months ago but I can't find anything anymore.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoWait... You want me to _pay_ to join a dumpster fire?
- mark_l_watson 5y agoGreat. I subscribe to Reddit Premium to skip the ads, and I will be happy to do the same for Twitter. That said, I didn't notice specifically that there would be no ads, in which case ... nope.
- ergot_vacation 5y agoYour money is yours to do with as you like, but I strongly encourage you to not give it to reddit. There are few large sites these days with as much raw contempt for their userbase, and that's saying something in 2021. Paying for reddit is like being in an abusive relationship. You deserve better.
- fragileone 5y agoYou can use teddit.net or libredd.it to avoid them too.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoTwitter is the closest thing to 1984's "Two Minutes Hate." Wikipedia: "In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell, the Two Minutes Hate is the daily, public period during which members of the Outer Party of Oceania must watch a film depicting the enemies of the state, specifically Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers, to openly and loudly express hatred for them. The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatreds towards politically expedient enemies: Goldstein and the enemy superstate of the moment. In re-directing the members' subconscious feelings away from the Party's government of Oceania, and towards non-existent external enemies, the Party minimises thoughtcrime and the consequent, subversive behaviours of thoughtcriminals." And from the book itself: "The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp." And you want me to freaking pay to be a part of this process? And you won't even take away the ads for a paying member?
- subculture 5y agoOr as @maplecocaine succinctly put in tweet form: "Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it"[0]. There's a LOT to improve about the hate on Twitter. I also think that trolls and griefers who don't have an audience snuff themselves out. If paying can make a dent in that I'm interested. [0]https://twitter.com/maplecocaine/status/1080665226410889217?s=20 https://twitter.com/maplecocaine/status/1080665226410889217?...
- andyxor 5y agoI’d pay to filter for a particular niche, e.g. Twitter is excellent to keep up with neuroscience research news
- theshadowknows 5y agoI have three social media accounts: this one, one for Twitter which is fully blank, and one for micro.blog. The only reason I even have the Twitter account is because sometimes people link to tweets and I got tired of not being able to see them. But not enough to make an account and actually use it. I really enjoy micro.blog. I have...five people that I talk to regularly and maybe a few dozen that I follow. It’s been a great way to have a little social media circle without going crazy on Twitter or Reddit. I actually do have a Facebook account. But it’s only so that you can use messenger which for some reason is the only messenger app that my brother will use.
- ksaj 5y agoThe 'undo' feature seems to be aimed more at people who can read your comments, since a user can already delete their posts anyway. It seems strange to put a price on something that conveniences other people.