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This study shows that 25% of Twitter users send 97% of all tweets: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-study-shows-that-25-of-twitter-users-produce-97-of-

by fleddr 5y ago

This study shows that 25% of Twitter users send 97% of all tweets: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-study-shows-that-25-of-twitter-users-produce-97-of-all-tweets/610146/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-study-shows-that-2... And some 80% of that are retweets or replies, not original tweets. Most people do not use Twitter at all. When they do use it, it is mostly read-only. When it's not read-only, it's most retweeting stuff. You can't deny that Twitter has an outsized cultural influence, but the underlying reality is sobering. It's not a "speech" platform for the masses as no actual speech happens by the masses themselves. If the retweet button were to be removed, the platform would collapse. It's not surprising that the masses don't post. You can't express yourself on Twitter due to the character limit, so all you can do is witty superficial takes. Threading and replies are a disaster making a structured discussion impossible. These two things alone make the platform useless for most speech purposes. And let's not forget the sour atmosphere of extreme hostility, permanent outrage, bad faith discussions, smearing, doxxing, cancellations, the culture is terrible. Back on point, I think Twitter has a far bigger problem than a free speech problem. There is very little speech and it excessively rewards the most unreasonable speech.

djrogers 5y ago
> You can't express yourself on Twitter due to the character limit That's completely untrue - there are certain types of expression unsuited for twitter, but it's far from impossible to express oneself.
madeofpalk 5y ago
> This study shows that 25% of Twitter users send 97% of all tweets This is significantly higher than I expected, and I think Twitter would be proud of that.
- alophawen 5y ago
  As also mentioned in the comment you reacted on, 80% of those 25% is retweets. You also need to consider how much of that is bots.
  - me_me_mu_mu 5y ago
    Seriously I feel like at least 50% of “users” are actually bots whether on Reddit or Facebook or whatever but they get listed as MAU lol
    - alophawen 5y ago
      Yep, I wouldn't be surprised if its even more.
    - JacobThreeThree 5y ago
      Bots and astroturf users.
  - madeofpalk 5y ago
    > And some 80% of that are retweets _or replies_. I'm sure there are more retweets than replies, but still. 10% of users (is that the math? probably not.) are actively posting original tweets, and even more are replying to them. That's alright I think.
neaanopri 5y ago
I probably do 100 replies for every 1 original tweet. This is fine and "good actually" Consider a traditional PHP forum. How much of the discussion is the "OP" post in a thread, and how much is all of the discussion afterwards? It's the same on twitter.
- fknorangesite 5y ago
  > Consider a traditional PHP forum. Or HN, for that matter.
BurningFrog 5y ago
Twitter can be a speech platform even if < 50% of users speak on it. Most public speaking has more listeners than speakers. There is nothing at all wrong with that.
aardvarkr 5y ago
Those same stats are true for EVERY social media platform. Twitter is not the exception here. What percentage of Reddit users do you think comment on a post? What percentage of hacker news readers submit new posts or write comments? Instagram content consumers vs producers? Most people are followers and that’s ok. You can get off your soap box now.
- thisistheend123 5y ago
  - genghisjahn 5y ago
    Have a look at the references listed in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule#:~:text=2%20Participation%20inequality-,Definition,forum%20but%20do%20not%20post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule#:~:text=2%20Particip....
  - idlewords 5y ago
    Google "Pareto principle" for infinite examples.
  - jlmorton 5y ago
    There is a widely-known Internet rule of thumb that 1% of users add content, and 99% lurk. There have been several studies that seek to validate that, several of which are outlined in the Wiki summary: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
    - vrc 5y ago
      I always have heard the 90-9-1 rule. 90 lurk, 9 interact, 1 create. Not sure where I heard that though.
  - cbg0 5y ago
    More than 98% of Reddit users don't post or comment on posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/lets_hear_it_for_the_lurkers_the_vast_majority_of/ejd1gtk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/let...
dudul 5y ago
I don't think Twitter has a problem, I think companies who use Twitter to plan their strategy have a problem. Companies who spend money to look good on Twitter, companies who pay ad companies who use Twitter to design their campaigns, etc etc. Anyone who thinks Twitter is an accurate representation of the general population is building houses on a sand beach.
- HereIGoAgain 5y ago
  "Anyone who thinks Twitter is an accurate representation of the general population is building houses on a sand beach. " So much this! It's hard to understand how so many people and businesses could actually believe it is.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > Anyone who thinks Twitter is an accurate representation of the general population is building houses on a sand beach. E.g. So called "cancel culture" works because companies routinely assume that Twitter outrage translates to real world outrage. Would be nice if companies could recalibrate their response.
  - HereIGoAgain 5y ago
    This.. It's part of the reason why I'm against companies, especially media ones and fandoms, from dealing with their "fans" through SM. Even in general, doing so means loss of differentiation between your fans and tens of millions of random people.. some of whom might have other reasons for giving input. But this is a whole other issue of its own.
andrew_ 5y ago
> If the retweet button were to be removed, the platform would collapse. I disagree. I was a twitter user before the retweet button appeared. We all got creative to effectively RT others without the need for a button. The button appeared because users organically developed the retweet and the button just made it more convenient.
- fleddr 5y ago
  You know you're basically confirming the point of there not being original content, right?
  - andrew_ 5y ago
    I didn't comment on that, only the specific portion that I quoted.
adventured 5y ago
Studies show 99%+ of TV, radio and newspaper consumers contribute less than 1% of the content. What does that have to do with the impact such mediums have on the masses? Twitter is a read-heavy broadcasting platform. Just because the masses don't publish there, that doesn't mean they don't consume it and aren't impacted by it (embeds, story pick-ups, cultural influences, and on it goes). There's a reason nearly everyone that's anyone uses Twitter to broadcast to their public still to this day, despite Twitter being an aged platform at this point; that spans from famous musicians or athletes, to politicians. The war in Ukraine? You can follow it on Twitter from official sources; in many cases better and faster than you can get it from any other mediums. Zelenskyy's Twitter account is one of the most important broadcast mediums that he has access to. > If the retweet button were to be removed, the platform would collapse. There's nothing interesting about that premise. If you removed the same feature from tumblr at the height of its popularity, it would have collapsed as well. If you remove integral features, it's usually bad for products. Most people are mimics, not originators. There is no scenario where a platform is going to exist that is both massive in scale and is primarily original content produced by the masses. Most content on massive platforms will be cloned, copied, retweeted / reposted content. The sole exception is photo posting, in which the masses post photos from their lives (which are going to tend to be technically unique and generally require zero creativity to originate, point and shoot).
- golemotron 5y ago
  Twitter and Facebook are television by other means.
danso 5y ago
We should expect Twitter’s read-only ratio to be smaller because of the low friction of just tweeting. But is there another platform or medium where the creator-to-passive consumer ratio is significantly better? I’d assume blogging was much more read than done, back in the day. (public broadcast platforms, I mean — presumably e-mail has more parity in participation between consumers and creators)
eric_cc 5y ago
> Most people do not use Twitter at all. Read-only is still using it. > It's not a "speech" platform for the masses as no actual speech happens by the masses themselves. The masses are willingly choosing to use the app in this way. If anything, many people are afraid to post because of cancel culture. > It's not surprising that the masses don't post. You can't express yourself on Twitter due to the character limit Contrary to what you might think, you don’t need long-form text to express yourself. Most people don’t care enough about you and prefer a TL/DR > the culture is terrible. This depends on how you use the app. > I think Twitter has a far bigger problem than a free speech problem. Of course you do.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  >> Most people do not use Twitter at all. > Read-only is still using it. Sure, but that's a separate thing. Lots of people don't use Twitter at all. Then, there is a smaller but huge group that uses it purely to read. Then, there is a smaller but large group that writes. Then, there is a tiny group that writes a lot.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
The reason I stay on Twitter is that I can find experts in niche fields to follow. For example, since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, I have followed a number of credentialed military and Russia experts, and have consequently a better understanding of current events there.
EricMausler 5y ago
A retweet can say a whole lot without adding words. If nothing else it is a vote.
edwnj 5y ago
P-HACKING 25% is actually really really good. Its just above the 80/20 pareto principle. Prices law probably makes more sense here but the point is still the same, pretty much all platforms where you are publishing you'll see a similar distribution. Pretty all the users except a few contribute little to nothing and a very few contribute the most highest value output and accumulate a lot of value (followers/influence). Usage (consumption is what you are looking for).. like monthly active users..
- antattack 5y ago
  Only 3.5% of all Twitter users post original content. 25% includes re-tweets and replies.
  - jldl805 5y ago
    Is that 3.5% of total users or monthly active users? If the former, you totally ignored the parent comment's point.
    - antattack 5y ago
      It's in the link [0]referenced by parent: user activity June-Sept 2021 [0]https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-study-shows-that-25-of-twitter-users-produce-97-of-all-tweets/610146/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-study-shows-that-2...
woah 5y ago
0.00001% of nytimes.com users write all the articles- what's your point?
simonh 5y ago
25% is ~50 million people. Also just because 80% of tweets are retweets, that doesn't mean only 20% of them are tweeting original content, it's probably a mix. So realistically we're looking at tens of millions of people forming the core contributor community. Hardly a small elite.
tim333 5y ago
>no actual speech happens by the masses themselves Not true. Maybe most don't bother but anyone can. And it's kind of unique that I as Joe Public can tweet to @JoeBiden or whoever. I don't know any other platform like that. Maybe no one will bother reading my tweet but it's a free world and that's their choice.
Pxtl 5y ago
Twitter's value proposition isn't your ability to contribute, it's the fact that VIP you care about is there publicly contributing, and the flaws you describe are 100X worse on the only competitor that can boast similarly - Facebook. Conversations on Twitter are bad, but Facebook's are so much worse. Just finding a reply in an FB thread is near-impossible. Even finding the same post on FB twice is challenging. My local journos, politicians, favorite webcomic artists, bands, podcasters, city councilors, are all accessible and engaging on twitter. That's the value proposition. It's no coincidence that twitter was Trump's preferred platform - it just works well with that use-case. Nobody cares about my tweets of "hey look at this cocktail I had at the bar". That's where FB or Insta are better.
throwawa3495 5y ago
>There is very little speech and it excessively rewards the most unreasonable speech. never going to change--the most intolerant win as taleb has demonstrated formally. If anything is to change Twitter must go to the limit of constitutionally protected speech (dont @ me with `twitter is a private company`)
AlwaysRock 5y ago
Ha. If commenting were removed from FB it would collapse. If connecting were removed from LinkedIn it would collapse. What is your point?
dehrmann 5y ago
The issue is that that Twitter engagement model doesn't scale, and they can't really move away from it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ftlio 5y ago
You can find interesting people saying things, but most of them will be appealing to their audience by complaining when their ingroup gets any negative commentary, and quote retweeting shade at their outgroup. It's like some weird version of British Parliament where the stakes are as low as which obscure philosopher is actually more like this philosopher than that one.
epivosism 5y ago
I'll bet 1% of people write 100% of all books. Does that prove anything negative about books as a medium? If not, why are you using an analogy to it to attempt to show something negative about twitter?
_8j50 5y ago
25% is very high. Typical rate is <= 10%
tibyat 5y ago
Tepix 5y ago
> And some 80% of that are retweets or replies, not original tweets. Somewhat related: I recently found the feature where you can go through your contacts and ignore the retweets of them individually. I don't know how long this feature has been around but it's great!
gonehome 5y ago
Twitter is what you make of it. It has some bad incentive issues that lead to outrage and dumb hostile retweets driving increased engagement/follower count, but it's also possible to just ignore and block all of that stuff. You can find high quality accounts to follow and interact directly with interesting people doing interesting things. When used well and filtered properly it is the best source of high quality real time information available anywhere. There's just a lot of noise so filtering well can be tricky (and most people like the noise because it plays into tribal human nonsense). The reason most people don't participate imo is because there's a lot of competition. It's hard to be interesting when competing on a truly global scale, it's a lot more competitive and the 'easy' ways to get attention are also often the worst. Most people would be tweeting into a void without anyone paying attention. My issue with the speech thing is not Twitter's flawed moderation (which is an exercise of their speech), it's that we're trapped in a local maximum where massive centralized companies end up with a responsibility they shouldn't have that's effectively impossible for them to do well. The issue here runs deeper and isn't something we can escape without some serious changes to the computing stack we're operating in. Things can be tweaked and improved as they are, but can't be truly fixed with our current stack - it's a problem of incentives and capability. Ideally it's not the responsibility of a CEO to moderate billions of people (or to establish teams to do so). The promise of the world wide web was a decentralized system of individuals controlling their own distribution. In that world speech is free, but people decide who they listen to absent incentive issues around engagement and platforms having to make decision about users they give service to. The centralized services are trapped in an impossible situation and there is no good option in the current situation: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-free-speech.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f...
- fleddr 5y ago
  My comment isn't about your personal experience on Twitter, rather the role it plays at a macro level. It is a platform that is politically impactful, and not in a good way. It rewards division, extremism, polarization, it brings out the worst in us. That's on Twitter. They actively designed the product to do so.
  - 5y ago
slightwinder 5y ago
> I think Twitter has a far bigger problem than a free speech problem. Not Twitter has the problem, society has. Twitter is growing fine on its own, there is no end in sight. But the platform is more and more influencing the rest of the world, and usually it's more of the toxic than healthy kind of influence.
teawrecks 5y ago
As someone who doesn't use twitter primarily because of this "everything is retweets" phenomenon, I wouldn't say that means no one uses it. Twitter is an idea propagation platform. It's not about everyone just sharing and consuming original content; what good is original content if only direct connections ever see it? Twitter's most important aspect is watching ideas spread, even if it's misinformation, even if it's a cat video, even if it's a big game of telephone and the meaning gets corrupted in transit, you get to see what resonates with people. And that is very valuable.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Largely correct, I mostly only use it as my news feed from mainstream (oh no!) news sources and some bloggers when they post a new blog; this is post giving up on RSS feeds. I think I only have one twitter post to date after 7 or 8 years.
anony23 5y ago
I disagree with your thesis, I think twitter thrives as a place for certain niche communities to interact.
fomine3 5y ago
25% for 97% looks pretty good ratio.
HereIGoAgain 5y ago
Ugh Yeah.. I am so so happy that I stayed away from unsocial media from the start.. Took one look at it in the early days and decided to nope out! Can't wait until SM collapses under it's own hate and the net, fandoms and discourse can go back to where it belongs. Small to medium sites and dedicated message forums.

by fleddr 5y ago

djrogers 5y ago

> You can't express yourself on Twitter due to the character limit That's completely untrue - there are certain types of expression unsuited for twitter, but it's far from impossible to express oneself.

madeofpalk 5y ago

> This study shows that 25% of Twitter users send 97% of all tweets This is significantly higher than I expected, and I think Twitter would be proud of that.

alophawen 5y ago
As also mentioned in the comment you reacted on, 80% of those 25% is retweets. You also need to consider how much of that is bots.
- me_me_mu_mu 5y ago
  Seriously I feel like at least 50% of “users” are actually bots whether on Reddit or Facebook or whatever but they get listed as MAU lol
  - alophawen 5y ago
    Yep, I wouldn't be surprised if its even more.
  - JacobThreeThree 5y ago
    Bots and astroturf users.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  > And some 80% of that are retweets _or replies_. I'm sure there are more retweets than replies, but still. 10% of users (is that the math? probably not.) are actively posting original tweets, and even more are replying to them. That's alright I think.

neaanopri 5y ago

I probably do 100 replies for every 1 original tweet. This is fine and "good actually" Consider a traditional PHP forum. How much of the discussion is the "OP" post in a thread, and how much is all of the discussion afterwards? It's the same on twitter.

fknorangesite 5y ago
> Consider a traditional PHP forum. Or HN, for that matter.

BurningFrog 5y ago

Twitter can be a speech platform even if < 50% of users speak on it. Most public speaking has more listeners than speakers. There is nothing at all wrong with that.

aardvarkr 5y ago

Those same stats are true for EVERY social media platform. Twitter is not the exception here. What percentage of Reddit users do you think comment on a post? What percentage of hacker news readers submit new posts or write comments? Instagram content consumers vs producers? Most people are followers and that’s ok. You can get off your soap box now.

thisistheend123 5y ago
- genghisjahn 5y ago
  Have a look at the references listed in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule#:~:text=2%20Participation%20inequality-,Definition,forum%20but%20do%20not%20post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule#:~:text=2%20Particip....
- idlewords 5y ago
  Google "Pareto principle" for infinite examples.
- jlmorton 5y ago
  There is a widely-known Internet rule of thumb that 1% of users add content, and 99% lurk. There have been several studies that seek to validate that, several of which are outlined in the Wiki summary: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
  - vrc 5y ago
    I always have heard the 90-9-1 rule. 90 lurk, 9 interact, 1 create. Not sure where I heard that though.
- cbg0 5y ago
  More than 98% of Reddit users don't post or comment on posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/lets_hear_it_for_the_lurkers_the_vast_majority_of/ejd1gtk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/let...

dudul 5y ago

I don't think Twitter has a problem, I think companies who use Twitter to plan their strategy have a problem. Companies who spend money to look good on Twitter, companies who pay ad companies who use Twitter to design their campaigns, etc etc. Anyone who thinks Twitter is an accurate representation of the general population is building houses on a sand beach.

HereIGoAgain 5y ago
"Anyone who thinks Twitter is an accurate representation of the general population is building houses on a sand beach. " So much this! It's hard to understand how so many people and businesses could actually believe it is.
rootusrootus 5y ago
> Anyone who thinks Twitter is an accurate representation of the general population is building houses on a sand beach. E.g. So called "cancel culture" works because companies routinely assume that Twitter outrage translates to real world outrage. Would be nice if companies could recalibrate their response.
- HereIGoAgain 5y ago
  This.. It's part of the reason why I'm against companies, especially media ones and fandoms, from dealing with their "fans" through SM. Even in general, doing so means loss of differentiation between your fans and tens of millions of random people.. some of whom might have other reasons for giving input. But this is a whole other issue of its own.

andrew_ 5y ago

> If the retweet button were to be removed, the platform would collapse. I disagree. I was a twitter user before the retweet button appeared. We all got creative to effectively RT others without the need for a button. The button appeared because users organically developed the retweet and the button just made it more convenient.

fleddr 5y ago
You know you're basically confirming the point of there not being original content, right?
- andrew_ 5y ago
  I didn't comment on that, only the specific portion that I quoted.

adventured 5y ago

Studies show 99%+ of TV, radio and newspaper consumers contribute less than 1% of the content. What does that have to do with the impact such mediums have on the masses? Twitter is a read-heavy broadcasting platform. Just because the masses don't publish there, that doesn't mean they don't consume it and aren't impacted by it (embeds, story pick-ups, cultural influences, and on it goes). There's a reason nearly everyone that's anyone uses Twitter to broadcast to their public still to this day, despite Twitter being an aged platform at this point; that spans from famous musicians or athletes, to politicians. The war in Ukraine? You can follow it on Twitter from official sources; in many cases better and faster than you can get it from any other mediums. Zelenskyy's Twitter account is one of the most important broadcast mediums that he has access to. > If the retweet button were to be removed, the platform would collapse. There's nothing interesting about that premise. If you removed the same feature from tumblr at the height of its popularity, it would have collapsed as well. If you remove integral features, it's usually bad for products. Most people are mimics, not originators. There is no scenario where a platform is going to exist that is both massive in scale and is primarily original content produced by the masses. Most content on massive platforms will be cloned, copied, retweeted / reposted content. The sole exception is photo posting, in which the masses post photos from their lives (which are going to tend to be technically unique and generally require zero creativity to originate, point and shoot).

golemotron 5y ago
Twitter and Facebook are television by other means.

danso 5y ago

We should expect Twitter’s read-only ratio to be smaller because of the low friction of just tweeting. But is there another platform or medium where the creator-to-passive consumer ratio is significantly better? I’d assume blogging was much more read than done, back in the day. (public broadcast platforms, I mean — presumably e-mail has more parity in participation between consumers and creators)

eric_cc 5y ago

> Most people do not use Twitter at all. Read-only is still using it. > It's not a "speech" platform for the masses as no actual speech happens by the masses themselves. The masses are willingly choosing to use the app in this way. If anything, many people are afraid to post because of cancel culture. > It's not surprising that the masses don't post. You can't express yourself on Twitter due to the character limit Contrary to what you might think, you don’t need long-form text to express yourself. Most people don’t care enough about you and prefer a TL/DR > the culture is terrible. This depends on how you use the app. > I think Twitter has a far bigger problem than a free speech problem. Of course you do.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
>> Most people do not use Twitter at all. > Read-only is still using it. Sure, but that's a separate thing. Lots of people don't use Twitter at all. Then, there is a smaller but huge group that uses it purely to read. Then, there is a smaller but large group that writes. Then, there is a tiny group that writes a lot.

SubiculumCode 5y ago

The reason I stay on Twitter is that I can find experts in niche fields to follow. For example, since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, I have followed a number of credentialed military and Russia experts, and have consequently a better understanding of current events there.

EricMausler 5y ago

A retweet can say a whole lot without adding words. If nothing else it is a vote.

edwnj 5y ago

P-HACKING 25% is actually really really good. Its just above the 80/20 pareto principle. Prices law probably makes more sense here but the point is still the same, pretty much all platforms where you are publishing you'll see a similar distribution. Pretty all the users except a few contribute little to nothing and a very few contribute the most highest value output and accumulate a lot of value (followers/influence). Usage (consumption is what you are looking for).. like monthly active users..

antattack 5y ago
Only 3.5% of all Twitter users post original content. 25% includes re-tweets and replies.
- jldl805 5y ago
  Is that 3.5% of total users or monthly active users? If the former, you totally ignored the parent comment's point.
  - antattack 5y ago
    It's in the link [0]referenced by parent: user activity June-Sept 2021 [0]https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-study-shows-that-25-of-twitter-users-produce-97-of-all-tweets/610146/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-study-shows-that-2...

woah 5y ago

0.00001% of nytimes.com users write all the articles- what's your point?

simonh 5y ago

25% is ~50 million people. Also just because 80% of tweets are retweets, that doesn't mean only 20% of them are tweeting original content, it's probably a mix. So realistically we're looking at tens of millions of people forming the core contributor community. Hardly a small elite.

tim333 5y ago

>no actual speech happens by the masses themselves Not true. Maybe most don't bother but anyone can. And it's kind of unique that I as Joe Public can tweet to @JoeBiden or whoever. I don't know any other platform like that. Maybe no one will bother reading my tweet but it's a free world and that's their choice.

Pxtl 5y ago

Twitter's value proposition isn't your ability to contribute, it's the fact that VIP you care about is there publicly contributing, and the flaws you describe are 100X worse on the only competitor that can boast similarly - Facebook. Conversations on Twitter are bad, but Facebook's are so much worse. Just finding a reply in an FB thread is near-impossible. Even finding the same post on FB twice is challenging. My local journos, politicians, favorite webcomic artists, bands, podcasters, city councilors, are all accessible and engaging on twitter. That's the value proposition. It's no coincidence that twitter was Trump's preferred platform - it just works well with that use-case. Nobody cares about my tweets of "hey look at this cocktail I had at the bar". That's where FB or Insta are better.

throwawa3495 5y ago

>There is very little speech and it excessively rewards the most unreasonable speech. never going to change--the most intolerant win as taleb has demonstrated formally. If anything is to change Twitter must go to the limit of constitutionally protected speech (dont @ me with `twitter is a private company`)

AlwaysRock 5y ago

Ha. If commenting were removed from FB it would collapse. If connecting were removed from LinkedIn it would collapse. What is your point?

dehrmann 5y ago

The issue is that that Twitter engagement model doesn't scale, and they can't really move away from it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ftlio 5y ago

You can find interesting people saying things, but most of them will be appealing to their audience by complaining when their ingroup gets any negative commentary, and quote retweeting shade at their outgroup. It's like some weird version of British Parliament where the stakes are as low as which obscure philosopher is actually more like this philosopher than that one.

epivosism 5y ago

I'll bet 1% of people write 100% of all books. Does that prove anything negative about books as a medium? If not, why are you using an analogy to it to attempt to show something negative about twitter?

_8j50 5y ago

25% is very high. Typical rate is <= 10%

tibyat 5y ago

Tepix 5y ago

> And some 80% of that are retweets or replies, not original tweets. Somewhat related: I recently found the feature where you can go through your contacts and ignore the retweets of them individually. I don't know how long this feature has been around but it's great!

gonehome 5y ago

Twitter is what you make of it. It has some bad incentive issues that lead to outrage and dumb hostile retweets driving increased engagement/follower count, but it's also possible to just ignore and block all of that stuff. You can find high quality accounts to follow and interact directly with interesting people doing interesting things. When used well and filtered properly it is the best source of high quality real time information available anywhere. There's just a lot of noise so filtering well can be tricky (and most people like the noise because it plays into tribal human nonsense). The reason most people don't participate imo is because there's a lot of competition. It's hard to be interesting when competing on a truly global scale, it's a lot more competitive and the 'easy' ways to get attention are also often the worst. Most people would be tweeting into a void without anyone paying attention. My issue with the speech thing is not Twitter's flawed moderation (which is an exercise of their speech), it's that we're trapped in a local maximum where massive centralized companies end up with a responsibility they shouldn't have that's effectively impossible for them to do well. The issue here runs deeper and isn't something we can escape without some serious changes to the computing stack we're operating in. Things can be tweaked and improved as they are, but can't be truly fixed with our current stack - it's a problem of incentives and capability. Ideally it's not the responsibility of a CEO to moderate billions of people (or to establish teams to do so). The promise of the world wide web was a decentralized system of individuals controlling their own distribution. In that world speech is free, but people decide who they listen to absent incentive issues around engagement and platforms having to make decision about users they give service to. The centralized services are trapped in an impossible situation and there is no good option in the current situation: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-free-speech.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f...

fleddr 5y ago
My comment isn't about your personal experience on Twitter, rather the role it plays at a macro level. It is a platform that is politically impactful, and not in a good way. It rewards division, extremism, polarization, it brings out the worst in us. That's on Twitter. They actively designed the product to do so.
- 5y ago

slightwinder 5y ago

> I think Twitter has a far bigger problem than a free speech problem. Not Twitter has the problem, society has. Twitter is growing fine on its own, there is no end in sight. But the platform is more and more influencing the rest of the world, and usually it's more of the toxic than healthy kind of influence.

teawrecks 5y ago

As someone who doesn't use twitter primarily because of this "everything is retweets" phenomenon, I wouldn't say that means no one uses it. Twitter is an idea propagation platform. It's not about everyone just sharing and consuming original content; what good is original content if only direct connections ever see it? Twitter's most important aspect is watching ideas spread, even if it's misinformation, even if it's a cat video, even if it's a big game of telephone and the meaning gets corrupted in transit, you get to see what resonates with people. And that is very valuable.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Largely correct, I mostly only use it as my news feed from mainstream (oh no!) news sources and some bloggers when they post a new blog; this is post giving up on RSS feeds. I think I only have one twitter post to date after 7 or 8 years.

anony23 5y ago

I disagree with your thesis, I think twitter thrives as a place for certain niche communities to interact.

fomine3 5y ago

25% for 97% looks pretty good ratio.

HereIGoAgain 5y ago

Ugh Yeah.. I am so so happy that I stayed away from unsocial media from the start.. Took one look at it in the early days and decided to nope out! Can't wait until SM collapses under it's own hate and the net, fandoms and discourse can go back to where it belongs. Small to medium sites and dedicated message forums.