9 ms·

Twitter was special. But it's time to leave

89 points by jszymborski 4y ago

greatpostman 4y ago
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  Yeah, it was the same with WhatsApp.
  - akmarinov 4y ago
    As someone from Eastern Europe where no one uses Twitter and no one uses Whatsapp - it’s fun to look at these collapsing at least partially.
    - kgeist 4y ago
      Being from Eastern Europe myself (I confirm that it's not very popular), I never understood the appeal of Twitter in the current form (I'm not talking about the original idea of just posting your current status). It's like a forum with a very bad UI: a post is divided into dozens of subposts and the rest of UI leaves a lot to be desired (mostly about navigation). Before the modern social web era, we already had specialized forums where you could have deep discussions with experts on all sorts of things and those servers were already self-hosted/decentralized, while also having a decent UI with search and all. I myself used to frequent a forum which specialized on linguistics - hosted by a Ukrainian guy in Israel, you could have very interesting discussions with professors, students, amateurs on all kinds of linguistics topics. There was also a sense of community. Then people flocked to centralized big tech social networks and old-school forums started to die out but the desire to have meaningful discussions around some topic stayed so people started retrofitting existing social networks and I think that's how Twitter threads/discussions were born - same old discussions but in a very weird unergonomic format. I think reddit comes closest to the old forums, although I miss the old forum's hierarchical tree structure (for example, a subforum to discuss a subfield of linguistics). What would be awesome if we had those old-school forums back but if they also had some kind of interoperability (same login, search across a fleet of forums, etc.)
- maipen 4y ago
mmastrac 4y ago
I sent my final message (assuming I'm strong) today and I'll use Twitter for nothing other than watching a slow-motion car wreck. I think this is a good thing for the world, and breaking up that global echo chamber on both sides is going to have a net positive effect. I'm enjoying my time on https://hachyderm.io/ https://hachyderm.io/ - it feels like those small spaces that we used to inhabit before the world got too big. (@mmastrac@hachyderm.io is my current home) Once I feel more comfortable in Mastodon, I'll likely try to extract myself into a private server. I'm reminded of the old days of using someone's Fidonet server to participate in small-but-global communities, and how you'd eventually just run your own node to get a little more freedom.
- seydor 4y ago
  I am willing to bet that you ll tweet again as soon as the new outrage is launched. This is after a cursory look at your twits and style. It is exactly the kind of users that twitter wants to have. Followed, to check if i was right
abhinai 4y ago
Your Twitter experience is going to be what you make of it. It's based on the people you chose to follow. Nothing more. Nothing less. The author in this case seems to be politically motivated in his decision to leave Twitter. That's his right. But he definitely seems to be mixing politics with the beauty of Twitter and I'm not sure I agree with that.
- somedude895 4y ago
  I guess it depends on how you use it. I just follow accounts that I like and stick to that feed ordered by newest. I have all notifications deactivated and clicked Show Less Often on all recommended posts. Now I see only posts by the users I follow. But there's probably more people who check trending topics and then latch onto whatever the newest outrage is?
- INTPenis 4y ago
  That's exactly where you're wrong. Your twitter experience is going to be what Twitter wants it to be. Because twitter has user engagement metrics and it is in their financial interest to keep you hooked on the site's content. This is something I've had to repeat countless times during the last 2 weeks, when Twitter users end up in the fediverse confused about how to find content. There is no financial interest to keep you on a fediverse instance. You have to make an effort yourself.
  - dkrich 4y ago
    The problem for Twitter though is that they are very bad at hooking people. They desperately want to be like Instagram and tiktok in that regard but just will never have those types of numbers. I suspect the reason they can’t boils down to two things- poor engineering and just a lack of content. There just isn’t enough interesting content on the site to suck people in.
- simonw 4y ago
  > It's based on the people you chose to follow. Nothing more. Nothing less. My dog has a Twitter account. She keeps getting push notifications from people she doesn't follow, usually rage bait. She had to block Jordan Peterson!
SamReidHughes 4y ago
> With interest payments to the tune of $1bn or more a year, the future of the site itself depends on obtaining colossal new sources of revenue. Before the acquisition, Twitter's revenue was over 4 times that.
- qqtt 4y ago
  Exactly, and while profit was always elusive for Twitter - the biggest cost for Twitter was salaried employees which Musk has already cut by more than half. As mentioned in the blog post, previous management of Twitter was really REALLY unfocused. Adding NFTs, and a host of other things that never really caught on, while the core product routinely suffered a lack of even basic functionality (edit button anyone?). Twitter is now highly motivated to find profit and monetize, but I think it's a bit far fetched to assume a debt interest payment - out of everything else that is going on - is going to be the central thing that kills twitter.
  - mmcgaha 4y ago
    I think you are correct about the company getting product focused and that will eventually be great for the product. On the other hand this feels like a Digg->Reddit moment.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
EnKopVand 4y ago
I think it has been time to leave the massive American (and now the Chinese one too) "tech" companies for a while. So in a sense, it's great that Elon has shown the world the existence of Mastodon and the ActivityPub beneath it. I know, I know, a lot of you already knew about it and were already on it too, but I sure didn't. I'm European, Danish to be exact, and I've had this weird feeling about our politicians and public institutions being on things like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on, for about a decade now. Not because it's wrong for them to use the social media platforms, but because they rely so much on American advertisement companies in doing so. In that sense, something like Mastodon just makes a lot more sense. Our government could operate a Mastodon server where they house all our elected officials, and nobody would be at a risk of being banned for breaking some American TOS. They would even be able to moderate their comment threads a lot better, by not allowing stuff like American anti-vaxxers to comment on things about Danish vaccine programs without first having to rely on Twitter or Facebook to police it for them. It seems the EU has already gone in that direction, or at least did so back in the spring of 2022 when Elon first announced his plans to buy Twitter, but our local politicians haven't yet followed. Similarly, our journalist profession has something called a "pressekort" which is basically a certificate that shows the world that you're a Danish journalist. They could come together and build a Mastodon server where a "pressekort" is required to be a member. (There are already some of those springing up, so I guess it's already happening), and it's already limiting the amount of misinformation that happens on their posts by a massive amount. I know this won't be the "free to say anything without consequences" haven a lot of people here on HN want. We're already seeing right-wing network servers and users completely blocked, but it's sort of how free speech works in a democracy. Before the American advertisement companies gave the village looney a platform, nobody around here listened to them. We still largely don't listen to them in my country, but we sure waste more time on them than we did in the world before Facebook. So yes, the time has come to leave centralised Social Media companies. The real question is, whether we will actually do it. I'm not going to say that joining Mastodon was hard, because it wasn't. But I spent about a week researching a good server to join, and that's sure "harder" than just pushing my telefonnumber into TikTok.
- ulrikrasmussen 4y ago
  I think this is a very interesting idea, and I have had similar thoughts. The forum (doesn't have to be Mastodon, but could be) would probably have to be run be a separate entity following "armslængdeprincippet" similar to how DR (the public service tv/radio institution) is run, because a purely state governed service would result in some obvious conflicts of interest. But I think it is time to think about how to foster a healthy public discourse in the digital age, free from the harmful incentives of the adtech industry.
Grimburger 4y ago
> So, for my part, I’ll be moving on. My account will still exist, and I’ll perhaps use it to share posts from here, to help people migrate elsewhere, or to keep up with the increasingly few people I care about still on the platform. Instead, I’ll be posting in long-form here (subscribe!) That's the meat of the article if you are looking for it. I've always enjoyed pwn's content but will take a few $10 bets on them still using Twitter heavily 1 year from now. Reminds me of election season with all the people moving to Canada frankly, it's predictable as the moon phases.
- xdfgh1112 4y ago
  Yeah. Nobody is leaving for Mastodon.
  - rapsey 4y ago
    Mastodon is the linux desktop of social networks.
    - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
      Cool, maybe I'll join!
  - robin_reala 4y ago
    The majority of my active network on Twitter have now created Mastodon accounts and are posting there more than on Twitter. Maybe it’s my frontend web dev bubble?
    - Jorengarenar 4y ago
      I wouldn't be surprised if vast majority of Twitter users not only do not care but even isn't really aware of ownership change.
      - Swenrekcah 4y ago
        Unless the bots are sentient I suppose that’s true!
ALittleLight 4y ago
Seems very silly to me. There is no big difference before and after Musk except that people are talking a lot about Musk - it'll die down in a bit. I love Twitter and use it a lot. I hope it doesn't die though I acknowledge that's possible. It certainly hasn't died yet though - despite much waiting and gnashing of teeth.
- Marazan 4y ago
  https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1594139381727916033?t=xn3RfaRix3xlMtxDwgy0Mg&s=19 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1594139381727916033?t=x... It is breaking.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    I wonder if that's one of the "unnecessary" microservices that was turned off recently.
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    I see full movies and TV shows on YouTube pretty frequently and have for years. Is YouTube likewise breaking? Won't this tweet just get a DMCA takedown rather than break the platform?
    - Marazan 4y ago
      How many Full Hollywood movies can you find on youtube right now?
      - luckylion 4y ago
        Just search for "full movie" and filter for videos > 20minutes and you'll find some immediately. Youtube is falling apart!!! Google will not exist 6 months from now, the cracks are showing!!
      - ALittleLight 4y ago
        I searched "full movie" on YouTube and the first result I had was for Home Alone. Looks like it is the full movie and the account that posted it does not seem connected to Fox or Warner Bros or any "official" movie studio. Seems like a random person who claims in the video description that uploading Home Alone is "fair use". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owDd4zify-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owDd4zify-A I am not a copyright or intellectual property or legal expert - but my intuition says that Home Alone is probably as copyrighted as the movie Hackers (both older movies). Home Alone has been up for 3 weeks on YouTube with 435k views. By contrast, the tweet linked above showing that "Twitter is breaking" has already been removed (less than a day). Perhaps Home Alone is public domain or something, or whoever owns the intellectual property wants it shared like this. Not sure how I would check that, but I have seen lots of movies and TV shows like this on YouTube (sometimes with modifications to the sound or image to avoid automatic filtering). If Home Alone is free I'm sure I could find another example.
anthropodie 4y ago
I am reading lot of people are moving to mastodon. I never thought federation was the future but the more I think about it the more it is starting to make sense. The good part is federated alternatives do not look like massive echo chambers like Twitter is. Even if certain server does turn into an echo chamber the rest of network can just leave that server alone. Federation is closer to our actual societies. People don't clash on daily basis in our societies at least not as much as they do on Twitter. In real life, we avoid certain topics or getting involved with certain groups or going to regions/squares in cities where we know there is possibility of conflict. All these aspects are already well replicated into fediverse.
- EarlKing 4y ago
  > a lot A few thousand out of millions is not a lot. The fact that it took them until now to leave, just a few weeks after Musk took over, shows that it's not anything policy-related and motivated entirely by the removal of insiders from positions of influence within Twitter. Now they want to go infest the Fediverse. I think they'll find they're just as unwelcome there as they are on Twitter.
  - ttiurani 4y ago
    > A few thousand It's around 5000 per hour, well over a million new active users this month. https://mastodon.social/@atomicpoet/109368148529393065 https://mastodon.social/@atomicpoet/109368148529393065
  - MiguelX413 4y ago
    https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/07/boosted-by-twitter-drama-mastodon-reaches-1-million-active-monthly-users https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/07/boosted-by-twitter-drama-m... A few million, in contrast, is a lot. I partially agree that there were already several reasons to leave and that only leaving now means many will return. However, as someone who's been on the Fediverse for years and never found Twitter even usable, I must say the following: I don't really see how those users were in positions of power or influence, not do I see how they would be an infestation to the Fediverse. I also have not seen much unwelcoming content to the Twitter refugees in my area of the Fediverse. Though it is very hard to make judgments about the Fediverse since it's not even centralized or monolithic. https://pleroma.miguelcr.me/notice/APk4LL8HJtqJIoA2m8 https://pleroma.miguelcr.me/notice/APk4LL8HJtqJIoA2m8
alxmng 4y ago
This ferver demonstrates to me that Musk was right. Some people want Twitter to be exclusive to their own politics. They don't care about who they follow, they care about who other people are following.
- anthropodie 4y ago
  I don't think that is the case. The problem is Twitter pushes things your way that you have nothing to do about. They send you notifications to random actor's birthday. Then they push Tweets in your feed to maximize engagement. I know that can be turned off but way too many people don't and then they end up engaging in topics they know nothing about. This then make stupid things trend on Twitter. People are not leaving Twitter because of politics, they are leaving because they are finally seeing the cesspool that Twitter is.
  - MiguelX413 4y ago
    I never could JOIN Twitter for that reason. I tried to use it a year ago and I couldn't turn off all of the annoying inflammatory and inciteful comment not only in my feeds but in my NOTIFICATIONS. I just found it unusable and never became a regular user.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    > I know that can be turned off but way too many people don't and then they end up engaging in topics they know nothing about. This is 95% of social media, including HN.
  - alxmng 4y ago
    I don’t see what that has to do with Elon Musk or Donald Trump, which the blog post was about. What you describe was true long before Musk bought Twitter or Trump ran for president.
    - anthropodie 4y ago
      Yup it was. It has nothing to do with blog. I am just stating my problem with Twitter like others in this comment section.
TheChaplain 4y ago
Go ahead, find a place you like. I stay on Twitter, because there are a ton of accounts I follow that post things that interest me and that I learn from, in particular Python and related frameworks. But also programming in general plus much more interesting things like machinelearning and AI. I love the Godot project, and it's super fun to follow the #GodotEngine tag, you see so much amazing creations and tutorials people post. And Blender3D. Those are just a few examples and only IT, I also follow up on things that happen in cities where friends live, what is going on in their lives and what is happening in their cities. To me Twitter is a huge treasure trove of information. And this is probably going to sound arrogant, but I really don't care for your high-horse posts about departing Twitter (or any platform), because from where I stand it's because of your own inability to filter the things you like and dislike. I don't care who owns Twitter, I care about the people who create content that interest and inspire me. As long as they keep doing that, I will continue to be a happy follower.
- MiguelX413 4y ago
  For me, as someone who tried to use Twitter but never got into it: I never could filter out the political, inflammatory, and inciteful side of Twitter. It was never useful for me in that way. I just never understood how to, if you could. Though I'd think it's difficult to, considering that's the whole business model.
  - christkv 4y ago
    you can create filter keyword lists to get most of the crap out of your feed.
    - Markoff 4y ago
      exactly, filtering Trump, Putin, Russia, Ukraine, Zelensky, Elisabeth, Queen, etc. helps a lot with annoying popular topics I'm not interested to hear about from others at all plus then there is megablock - find topic you have very clear opinion about and block everyone who likes completely crazy opinion to stop wasting time potentially reading tweets from people who like such opinion. does it create echo chamber? sure, but it's way healthier than wasting your own time getting angry about some crazies whatever side you are on https://megablock.xyz https://megablock.xyz
anomaly_ 4y ago
seydor 4y ago
The socially mediated announcing their departure. Where have i seen this before. > healthy medium for serious communication. Maybe i m crazy but i ve never met "serious communication" even though i am very proactive to seek it. It s 100% emotional outbursts, very opinionated opinions and hot takes. It's fun but not serious. This article is like that, too
- spoonjim 4y ago
  https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1594090808864608257 https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1594090808864608257
  - seydor 4y ago
    I mean, there are exceptions, yet it's still an opinion
- visarga 4y ago
  I enjoy "learning the distribution". It's ok if it is high variance if we can have a decent sample size. You learn about all the crazy things but that creates a map that is useful later.
kramerger 4y ago
I feel the same about the strengths of old twitter, and how it has mostly been replaced with meaningless yammer, bots and whatever "engagement" means. I recently dusted off my old mastadon account, and it reminded me of the early days of twitter. I am sure people will find a way to screw up this one too, but for now I am happy to have something that resembles the good old days of twitter. Sceptics are talking about low usage and how it will never be as big as twitter. But for me that's just positive. In fact, mastadon does certain things a bit differently specifically to reduce meaningless "engagement". Hopefully this will also discourage "influencers" from joining :)
- yellow_lead 4y ago
  Agree with what you said. At least for now I don't have to see: "TEN things you didn't know about managing upwards. A thread." on Mastodon every 10 posts.
Jorengarenar 4y ago
Could somebody explain to me how people turned in their heads "Internet SMS" into "discussion board"?
sebow 4y ago
Feel free to leave and don't let the door stop you on the way out. Most of the so-called Twitter 'exodus' are people unhappy with the decision that Twitter will host different opinions from what Twitter used to in the past ~decade. And that's fine, but signalling your disapproval based on unfounded perceptions and speculations is disingenuous BECAUSE those same people used to champion everything about diversity and inclusivity. That's pretty hypocritical if nothing else.
- happosai 4y ago
  Can't speak of anyone else, but personally I decided to close my twitter account because the amount of "twitter drama" has just gone through the roof. Twitter has always been a bit too much of a egg-throwing contest. Which I have been mostly been able to avoid by choosing to not follow people who's feeds is not quote tweeting people who the hate. But that doesn't work anymore, the drama slips through from sensible people too. I don't think mastodon will be any better, the whole microblogging idea just encourages stupid hot takes and misunderstanding others. It's just not good for humankind, and I'm glad I was able to get over my addiction.
g42gregory 4y ago
Given such a division of opinions on Twitter and other platforms, I can't help but think that we need the 2 of everything: 2 Twitters, 2 Facebooks, 2 Googles, 2 Apples, 2 Netflixes, etc... Some people will be on Twitter 1 and be happy. Others will be on Twitter 2 and be just as content. The additional wrinkle is that the majority of "engagement" is coming from Group 1 and Group 2 mudslinging each other. If we separate them on two different platforms, the temperature of the conversations will go down. We already do exactly the same thing at the international football (soccer) competitions: you always sit the fans from opposing sides separately.
- MiguelX413 4y ago
  God no, one Twitter was already too many but it at least served it's role well as a quarantine to keep the rest of the internet safe from its users. Now that it can't even perform that role well, I don't see what use one, much less two, could possibly have.
  - g42gregory 4y ago
    I suspect that Group 1 and Group 2 will have very different ideas on what is means to keep Internet safe for their corresponding constituents. Depending on whether you belong to Group 1 or Group 2, you should feel safe on your own corresponding platform. Now, if someone insists on telling the opposing group how they should be running their lives, this particular ability will be greatly reduced.
    - MiguelX413 4y ago
      I don't understand the problem with telling people how to live their lives. I don't see what's wrong with vegans, pro-lifers, and many groups from all parts of the spectrum trying to stop people from doing things they believe to be wrong. I'd rather people try to stop people from doing things they see to be wrong rather than nobody stop people from doing bad things. I say this as someone who isn't a member of either of those groups. Their premises may be wrong but that's not a good reason to not fight against what one sees as immoral. I don't know what you mean by “safe” either. I'm just referring to the unbearable culture of Twitter being contained on Twitter. Though I recently have started to suspect that it's really only sustainable by the algorithms of Twitter and not people alone.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hsn915 4y ago
Eh, twitter has never been more interesting. I first joined Twitter to follow a couple of people who did not publish blogs regularly so Twitter was where they were. Overtime I started finding other interesting people and I strated following them. But also overtime people were getting suspended for publishing unapproved opinions, so a lot of the interesting people I was following were practicing self-censorship and reducing the amount/frequency of content they post. The last week has been probably the most interesting week in terms of amount of content/interaction people are having and also just sighs of relief. People are no longer practicing self-censorship. Some of the engagment is really "meta" in that people are on Twitter to talk about Twitter, which is a weird thing and can't last for too long, but it's still interesting. It feels like the old school internet. You can login and always find something new and interesting. I've never been more excited about Twitter.
EVADKN 4y ago
I never understand Twitter timeline...sometimes posts hours ago appears on top ...sometimes I saw boring posts from strangers. And they are not ads
- dkrich 4y ago
  You can change to chronological order in timeline settings. The interesting thing is that if you do that you’ll quickly realize that most content is shit and you’ll still get suggested tweets filling the void
secure 4y ago
Lots of people are saying “you’ll come back” and “nobody is migrating for real”, and I have had the same opinion back when the Twitter deal was first announced and a few people moved over to Mastodon. But this time, it was very different: When the deal went through, a large part of my bubble really did move to Mastodon. This happened over a few days, and after the second or third day, my Twitter timeline was noticeably empty, and Mastodon is very alive instead. Of course I can’t predict if this sticks over the medium or long term, but for me, the situation is very clear: the people I care about are now on Mastodon. (I spent 10 years on Twitter, with over 4000 followers.)
needle0 4y ago
This was probably written with only the English-speaking part of Twitter in the writer's field of view. English in Twitter doesn't comprise even a third of all tweets ( https://www.vicinitas.io/blog/twitter-social-media-strategy-2018-research-100-million-tweets#language https://www.vicinitas.io/blog/twitter-social-media-strategy-... ); in fact, for pure tweets that aren't RTs nor replies, the above data even shows there are more Japanese tweets than there are in English, albeit by a slim margin. So, I agree it's about the people, but I don't see the people leaving, at least in the languages I use.
- Kye 4y ago
  I think anyone who spoke Japanese and was going to move already did during the series of Japanese migrations. Some of the biggest instances are from Japan.
dkrich 4y ago
To me this whole thing is pretty simple if you understand Elon’s history. He’s a master pumper/promoter much like P.T. Barnum. He’s currently attempting to inflate twitter’s perceived value after being forced to buy it by going on and on about how “alive” the site is now (despite no real changes) with much higher engagement. I’m betting he takes the site public again in <6 months. What’s amazing though is the endless obsession with Elon by people who should know better and how they will blindly believe any and all things he says. Not even a hint of skepticism. So I imagine the IPO will garner a ton of interest and buyers who will overpay. Still Elon will probably take a massive loss on this deal unless the market recovers a great deal by then. Both things can be true by the way- Twitter was a massive dumpster fire due to having no leadership for a long time AND Elon could be trying to pump and dump it. I think in general Twitter’s value is overestimated by its users by a huge factor. If it vanished it might leave a void in people’s day but it would not have any meaningful impact on society. FWIW I don’t think it will vanish because while it’s a relatively small portion of society who use it regularly those users are incredibly sticky and aren’t going anywhere. After all this is over and it’s taken public again I suspect it will be largely the same site.
- thinkingemote 4y ago
  Agreed. He has explicitly said he intends to take it public once it starts making money at the same levels of other tech companies (I.e. via reducing headcount and increasing income from users) I don't think he is worried about any loss it might make if it doesn't work out, people are putting too much value on that but only as it would impact the ability to get funds for future endeavours.
  - mhoad 4y ago
    Why on earth would you say that someone is not worried about losing a $44 billion investment? That’s really not based on reality and the number of random changes they are currently pushing with zero strategic foresight makes it very clear that despite the blistering they are very much concerned.
  - dkrich 4y ago
    Yep and if you look at it through that lens it all becomes fairly predictable. Bringing trump back presumably increases controversy and engagement. Everything he does between now and taking it public will be to maximize attention no matter what. Expect many more off the cuff decisions/announcements in the coming weeks. As an aside it would be interesting if after all this football spiking by the Elon fans about how dispensable Twitter engineers are (I don’t have a strong opinion on this not really knowing the answer) the site does end up suffering a major outage due to a hack or something else. Given the number of personnel and policy changes that have seemingly been made with no planning or thought the odds of that would seem better than zero.
mhoad 4y ago
I agree with the author, at the end of the day Twitter is not going to make it and it’s time to consider alternatives. They have in just 3 weeks: - Become one of the least desirable tech companies to work for. - Poisoned (probably beyond repair) their primary revenue source which I think was as high as 90% of their incoming cash. - Developed a reputation as being a new home for the worst people on the internet. - Lost many of their biggest content creators. - Lost a huge part of their critical workforce with lots of incredible hard to replace people. - Attracted a lot of attention from lawmakers around the world about their supposed non compliance with various laws. This isn’t the kind of situation they are going to magically just “hardcore” their way out of. These were almost certainly fatal mistakes.
- MrRiddle 4y ago
pera 4y ago
I find the general negativity towards Mastodon in HN quite intriguing, considering that: - ActivityPub is basically a two-way RSS (which is the most beloved tech in this community) - It's open source and you can setup your own server in one afternoon - No sorting algorithms, no tracking, no ads - Relatively easy to customize/hack And to add to this, during this past month I have seen the majority of the infosec, astronomy, psychics, maths, biology, ecology communities migrating to Mastodon and for whatever reason my timeline is currently way more interesting and engaging than what Twitter offered to me. I'm not a big social network user and I guess that's why I don't understand the sentiment in this comment section, but I do enjoy using Mastodon at the moment and I hope it stays as cool as it is now :)
- luckylion 4y ago
  There's a daily thread of "Twitter is terrible, I'm moving to Mastodon" with lots of "yeah, Mastodon is great, Twitter will not exist 12 months from now" comments. What general negativity are you talking about?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- stareatgoats 4y ago
  I think maybe you have fallen prey to the misconception that there is a single "HN crowd" or an "official" HN community position on anything. That may have been the case in the beginning, but as far as I can see, any position on any topic can find a sizeable following here, to a large degree depending on the title of the article, what comments gets the top spots, and how the conversation develops from there in each case. If at all anything of the sort, the HN crowd might be critical thinkers, and so will tend to upvote anything that picks any popular notion apart, laser focused on the negative aspects. Just a reflection.
stareatgoats 4y ago
> With Musk sucking the oxygen out of Twitter, the conversations are quickly moving elsewhere Actually, the organic traffic on twitter.com shows an upward trajectory over the last weeks [0]. So unless there is something wrong with the stats on semrush, this writer seems to be confusing facts with wishful thinking. [0] https://www.semrush.com/analytics/overview/?q=twitter.com&searchType=domain https://www.semrush.com/analytics/overview/?q=twitter.com&se...
- mhoad 4y ago
  Yes, a lot of people want to watch Rome burn in it’s final days. That’s a terrible metric to use when you think about it.
  - MrRiddle 4y ago
bobcattz 4y ago
massive disinfo dont read comments ^^
jensgk 4y ago
Every buying or support decision you make is (in the end) political. Elon Musk uses his money to support his political agenda. If you are on Twitter you support Elon Musk and his political agenda. So if you do not support his views, get out. I did. It is as simple as that!
vixen99 4y ago
Why second guess what the moderation panels come up with ? As yet we have no idea.
icha 4y ago
Quite the opposite for me. Just started using it more actively for arts and other actually interesting stuff.
nemo44x 4y ago
For every person that self exiles to a fringe ghetto, a new person on Twitter will capture their audience.
benmmurphy 4y ago
It should be possible for the people who enjoy trump’s tweets to see them and those that don’t to avoid them. If that’s not possible there is something very wrong with a platform that seems to be based around following and gives you the option of blocking. if it’s possible for people to avoid trump easily then trump should have a voice on the platform.

89 points by jszymborski 4y ago

jbverschoor 4y ago
Yeah, it was the same with WhatsApp.
- akmarinov 4y ago
  As someone from Eastern Europe where no one uses Twitter and no one uses Whatsapp - it’s fun to look at these collapsing at least partially.
  - kgeist 4y ago
    Being from Eastern Europe myself (I confirm that it's not very popular), I never understood the appeal of Twitter in the current form (I'm not talking about the original idea of just posting your current status). It's like a forum with a very bad UI: a post is divided into dozens of subposts and the rest of UI leaves a lot to be desired (mostly about navigation). Before the modern social web era, we already had specialized forums where you could have deep discussions with experts on all sorts of things and those servers were already self-hosted/decentralized, while also having a decent UI with search and all. I myself used to frequent a forum which specialized on linguistics - hosted by a Ukrainian guy in Israel, you could have very interesting discussions with professors, students, amateurs on all kinds of linguistics topics. There was also a sense of community. Then people flocked to centralized big tech social networks and old-school forums started to die out but the desire to have meaningful discussions around some topic stayed so people started retrofitting existing social networks and I think that's how Twitter threads/discussions were born - same old discussions but in a very weird unergonomic format. I think reddit comes closest to the old forums, although I miss the old forum's hierarchical tree structure (for example, a subforum to discuss a subfield of linguistics). What would be awesome if we had those old-school forums back but if they also had some kind of interoperability (same login, search across a fleet of forums, etc.)
maipen 4y ago

I sent my final message (assuming I'm strong) today and I'll use Twitter for nothing other than watching a slow-motion car wreck. I think this is a good thing for the world, and breaking up that global echo chamber on both sides is going to have a net positive effect. I'm enjoying my time on https://hachyderm.io/ https://hachyderm.io/ - it feels like those small spaces that we used to inhabit before the world got too big. (@mmastrac@hachyderm.io is my current home) Once I feel more comfortable in Mastodon, I'll likely try to extract myself into a private server. I'm reminded of the old days of using someone's Fidonet server to participate in small-but-global communities, and how you'd eventually just run your own node to get a little more freedom.

seydor 4y ago
I am willing to bet that you ll tweet again as soon as the new outrage is launched. This is after a cursory look at your twits and style. It is exactly the kind of users that twitter wants to have. Followed, to check if i was right

abhinai 4y ago

Your Twitter experience is going to be what you make of it. It's based on the people you chose to follow. Nothing more. Nothing less. The author in this case seems to be politically motivated in his decision to leave Twitter. That's his right. But he definitely seems to be mixing politics with the beauty of Twitter and I'm not sure I agree with that.

somedude895 4y ago
I guess it depends on how you use it. I just follow accounts that I like and stick to that feed ordered by newest. I have all notifications deactivated and clicked Show Less Often on all recommended posts. Now I see only posts by the users I follow. But there's probably more people who check trending topics and then latch onto whatever the newest outrage is?
INTPenis 4y ago
That's exactly where you're wrong. Your twitter experience is going to be what Twitter wants it to be. Because twitter has user engagement metrics and it is in their financial interest to keep you hooked on the site's content. This is something I've had to repeat countless times during the last 2 weeks, when Twitter users end up in the fediverse confused about how to find content. There is no financial interest to keep you on a fediverse instance. You have to make an effort yourself.
- dkrich 4y ago
  The problem for Twitter though is that they are very bad at hooking people. They desperately want to be like Instagram and tiktok in that regard but just will never have those types of numbers. I suspect the reason they can’t boils down to two things- poor engineering and just a lack of content. There just isn’t enough interesting content on the site to suck people in.
simonw 4y ago
> It's based on the people you chose to follow. Nothing more. Nothing less. My dog has a Twitter account. She keeps getting push notifications from people she doesn't follow, usually rage bait. She had to block Jordan Peterson!

SamReidHughes 4y ago

> With interest payments to the tune of $1bn or more a year, the future of the site itself depends on obtaining colossal new sources of revenue. Before the acquisition, Twitter's revenue was over 4 times that.

qqtt 4y ago
Exactly, and while profit was always elusive for Twitter - the biggest cost for Twitter was salaried employees which Musk has already cut by more than half. As mentioned in the blog post, previous management of Twitter was really REALLY unfocused. Adding NFTs, and a host of other things that never really caught on, while the core product routinely suffered a lack of even basic functionality (edit button anyone?). Twitter is now highly motivated to find profit and monetize, but I think it's a bit far fetched to assume a debt interest payment - out of everything else that is going on - is going to be the central thing that kills twitter.
- mmcgaha 4y ago
  I think you are correct about the company getting product focused and that will eventually be great for the product. On the other hand this feels like a Digg->Reddit moment.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

EnKopVand 4y ago

I think it has been time to leave the massive American (and now the Chinese one too) "tech" companies for a while. So in a sense, it's great that Elon has shown the world the existence of Mastodon and the ActivityPub beneath it. I know, I know, a lot of you already knew about it and were already on it too, but I sure didn't. I'm European, Danish to be exact, and I've had this weird feeling about our politicians and public institutions being on things like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on, for about a decade now. Not because it's wrong for them to use the social media platforms, but because they rely so much on American advertisement companies in doing so. In that sense, something like Mastodon just makes a lot more sense. Our government could operate a Mastodon server where they house all our elected officials, and nobody would be at a risk of being banned for breaking some American TOS. They would even be able to moderate their comment threads a lot better, by not allowing stuff like American anti-vaxxers to comment on things about Danish vaccine programs without first having to rely on Twitter or Facebook to police it for them. It seems the EU has already gone in that direction, or at least did so back in the spring of 2022 when Elon first announced his plans to buy Twitter, but our local politicians haven't yet followed. Similarly, our journalist profession has something called a "pressekort" which is basically a certificate that shows the world that you're a Danish journalist. They could come together and build a Mastodon server where a "pressekort" is required to be a member. (There are already some of those springing up, so I guess it's already happening), and it's already limiting the amount of misinformation that happens on their posts by a massive amount. I know this won't be the "free to say anything without consequences" haven a lot of people here on HN want. We're already seeing right-wing network servers and users completely blocked, but it's sort of how free speech works in a democracy. Before the American advertisement companies gave the village looney a platform, nobody around here listened to them. We still largely don't listen to them in my country, but we sure waste more time on them than we did in the world before Facebook. So yes, the time has come to leave centralised Social Media companies. The real question is, whether we will actually do it. I'm not going to say that joining Mastodon was hard, because it wasn't. But I spent about a week researching a good server to join, and that's sure "harder" than just pushing my telefonnumber into TikTok.

ulrikrasmussen 4y ago
I think this is a very interesting idea, and I have had similar thoughts. The forum (doesn't have to be Mastodon, but could be) would probably have to be run be a separate entity following "armslængdeprincippet" similar to how DR (the public service tv/radio institution) is run, because a purely state governed service would result in some obvious conflicts of interest. But I think it is time to think about how to foster a healthy public discourse in the digital age, free from the harmful incentives of the adtech industry.

Grimburger 4y ago

> So, for my part, I’ll be moving on. My account will still exist, and I’ll perhaps use it to share posts from here, to help people migrate elsewhere, or to keep up with the increasingly few people I care about still on the platform. Instead, I’ll be posting in long-form here (subscribe!) That's the meat of the article if you are looking for it. I've always enjoyed pwn's content but will take a few $10 bets on them still using Twitter heavily 1 year from now. Reminds me of election season with all the people moving to Canada frankly, it's predictable as the moon phases.

xdfgh1112 4y ago
Yeah. Nobody is leaving for Mastodon.
- rapsey 4y ago
  Mastodon is the linux desktop of social networks.
  - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
    Cool, maybe I'll join!
- robin_reala 4y ago
  The majority of my active network on Twitter have now created Mastodon accounts and are posting there more than on Twitter. Maybe it’s my frontend web dev bubble?
  - Jorengarenar 4y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if vast majority of Twitter users not only do not care but even isn't really aware of ownership change.
    - Swenrekcah 4y ago
      Unless the bots are sentient I suppose that’s true!

ALittleLight 4y ago

Seems very silly to me. There is no big difference before and after Musk except that people are talking a lot about Musk - it'll die down in a bit. I love Twitter and use it a lot. I hope it doesn't die though I acknowledge that's possible. It certainly hasn't died yet though - despite much waiting and gnashing of teeth.

Marazan 4y ago
https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1594139381727916033?t=xn3RfaRix3xlMtxDwgy0Mg&s=19 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1594139381727916033?t=x... It is breaking.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  I wonder if that's one of the "unnecessary" microservices that was turned off recently.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  I see full movies and TV shows on YouTube pretty frequently and have for years. Is YouTube likewise breaking? Won't this tweet just get a DMCA takedown rather than break the platform?
  - Marazan 4y ago
    How many Full Hollywood movies can you find on youtube right now?
    - luckylion 4y ago
      Just search for "full movie" and filter for videos > 20minutes and you'll find some immediately. Youtube is falling apart!!! Google will not exist 6 months from now, the cracks are showing!!
    - ALittleLight 4y ago
      I searched "full movie" on YouTube and the first result I had was for Home Alone. Looks like it is the full movie and the account that posted it does not seem connected to Fox or Warner Bros or any "official" movie studio. Seems like a random person who claims in the video description that uploading Home Alone is "fair use". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owDd4zify-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owDd4zify-A I am not a copyright or intellectual property or legal expert - but my intuition says that Home Alone is probably as copyrighted as the movie Hackers (both older movies). Home Alone has been up for 3 weeks on YouTube with 435k views. By contrast, the tweet linked above showing that "Twitter is breaking" has already been removed (less than a day). Perhaps Home Alone is public domain or something, or whoever owns the intellectual property wants it shared like this. Not sure how I would check that, but I have seen lots of movies and TV shows like this on YouTube (sometimes with modifications to the sound or image to avoid automatic filtering). If Home Alone is free I'm sure I could find another example.

anthropodie 4y ago

I am reading lot of people are moving to mastodon. I never thought federation was the future but the more I think about it the more it is starting to make sense. The good part is federated alternatives do not look like massive echo chambers like Twitter is. Even if certain server does turn into an echo chamber the rest of network can just leave that server alone. Federation is closer to our actual societies. People don't clash on daily basis in our societies at least not as much as they do on Twitter. In real life, we avoid certain topics or getting involved with certain groups or going to regions/squares in cities where we know there is possibility of conflict. All these aspects are already well replicated into fediverse.

EarlKing 4y ago
> a lot A few thousand out of millions is not a lot. The fact that it took them until now to leave, just a few weeks after Musk took over, shows that it's not anything policy-related and motivated entirely by the removal of insiders from positions of influence within Twitter. Now they want to go infest the Fediverse. I think they'll find they're just as unwelcome there as they are on Twitter.
- ttiurani 4y ago
  > A few thousand It's around 5000 per hour, well over a million new active users this month. https://mastodon.social/@atomicpoet/109368148529393065 https://mastodon.social/@atomicpoet/109368148529393065
- MiguelX413 4y ago
  https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/07/boosted-by-twitter-drama-mastodon-reaches-1-million-active-monthly-users https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/07/boosted-by-twitter-drama-m... A few million, in contrast, is a lot. I partially agree that there were already several reasons to leave and that only leaving now means many will return. However, as someone who's been on the Fediverse for years and never found Twitter even usable, I must say the following: I don't really see how those users were in positions of power or influence, not do I see how they would be an infestation to the Fediverse. I also have not seen much unwelcoming content to the Twitter refugees in my area of the Fediverse. Though it is very hard to make judgments about the Fediverse since it's not even centralized or monolithic. https://pleroma.miguelcr.me/notice/APk4LL8HJtqJIoA2m8 https://pleroma.miguelcr.me/notice/APk4LL8HJtqJIoA2m8

alxmng 4y ago

This ferver demonstrates to me that Musk was right. Some people want Twitter to be exclusive to their own politics. They don't care about who they follow, they care about who other people are following.

anthropodie 4y ago
I don't think that is the case. The problem is Twitter pushes things your way that you have nothing to do about. They send you notifications to random actor's birthday. Then they push Tweets in your feed to maximize engagement. I know that can be turned off but way too many people don't and then they end up engaging in topics they know nothing about. This then make stupid things trend on Twitter. People are not leaving Twitter because of politics, they are leaving because they are finally seeing the cesspool that Twitter is.
- MiguelX413 4y ago
  I never could JOIN Twitter for that reason. I tried to use it a year ago and I couldn't turn off all of the annoying inflammatory and inciteful comment not only in my feeds but in my NOTIFICATIONS. I just found it unusable and never became a regular user.
- luckylion 4y ago
  > I know that can be turned off but way too many people don't and then they end up engaging in topics they know nothing about. This is 95% of social media, including HN.
- alxmng 4y ago
  I don’t see what that has to do with Elon Musk or Donald Trump, which the blog post was about. What you describe was true long before Musk bought Twitter or Trump ran for president.
  - anthropodie 4y ago
    Yup it was. It has nothing to do with blog. I am just stating my problem with Twitter like others in this comment section.

TheChaplain 4y ago

Go ahead, find a place you like. I stay on Twitter, because there are a ton of accounts I follow that post things that interest me and that I learn from, in particular Python and related frameworks. But also programming in general plus much more interesting things like machinelearning and AI. I love the Godot project, and it's super fun to follow the #GodotEngine tag, you see so much amazing creations and tutorials people post. And Blender3D. Those are just a few examples and only IT, I also follow up on things that happen in cities where friends live, what is going on in their lives and what is happening in their cities. To me Twitter is a huge treasure trove of information. And this is probably going to sound arrogant, but I really don't care for your high-horse posts about departing Twitter (or any platform), because from where I stand it's because of your own inability to filter the things you like and dislike. I don't care who owns Twitter, I care about the people who create content that interest and inspire me. As long as they keep doing that, I will continue to be a happy follower.

MiguelX413 4y ago
For me, as someone who tried to use Twitter but never got into it: I never could filter out the political, inflammatory, and inciteful side of Twitter. It was never useful for me in that way. I just never understood how to, if you could. Though I'd think it's difficult to, considering that's the whole business model.
- christkv 4y ago
  you can create filter keyword lists to get most of the crap out of your feed.
  - Markoff 4y ago
    exactly, filtering Trump, Putin, Russia, Ukraine, Zelensky, Elisabeth, Queen, etc. helps a lot with annoying popular topics I'm not interested to hear about from others at all plus then there is megablock - find topic you have very clear opinion about and block everyone who likes completely crazy opinion to stop wasting time potentially reading tweets from people who like such opinion. does it create echo chamber? sure, but it's way healthier than wasting your own time getting angry about some crazies whatever side you are on https://megablock.xyz https://megablock.xyz

anomaly_ 4y ago

seydor 4y ago

The socially mediated announcing their departure. Where have i seen this before. > healthy medium for serious communication. Maybe i m crazy but i ve never met "serious communication" even though i am very proactive to seek it. It s 100% emotional outbursts, very opinionated opinions and hot takes. It's fun but not serious. This article is like that, too

spoonjim 4y ago
https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1594090808864608257 https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1594090808864608257
- seydor 4y ago
  I mean, there are exceptions, yet it's still an opinion
visarga 4y ago
I enjoy "learning the distribution". It's ok if it is high variance if we can have a decent sample size. You learn about all the crazy things but that creates a map that is useful later.

kramerger 4y ago

I feel the same about the strengths of old twitter, and how it has mostly been replaced with meaningless yammer, bots and whatever "engagement" means. I recently dusted off my old mastadon account, and it reminded me of the early days of twitter. I am sure people will find a way to screw up this one too, but for now I am happy to have something that resembles the good old days of twitter. Sceptics are talking about low usage and how it will never be as big as twitter. But for me that's just positive. In fact, mastadon does certain things a bit differently specifically to reduce meaningless "engagement". Hopefully this will also discourage "influencers" from joining :)

yellow_lead 4y ago
Agree with what you said. At least for now I don't have to see: "TEN things you didn't know about managing upwards. A thread." on Mastodon every 10 posts.

Jorengarenar 4y ago

Could somebody explain to me how people turned in their heads "Internet SMS" into "discussion board"?

sebow 4y ago

Feel free to leave and don't let the door stop you on the way out. Most of the so-called Twitter 'exodus' are people unhappy with the decision that Twitter will host different opinions from what Twitter used to in the past ~decade. And that's fine, but signalling your disapproval based on unfounded perceptions and speculations is disingenuous BECAUSE those same people used to champion everything about diversity and inclusivity. That's pretty hypocritical if nothing else.

happosai 4y ago
Can't speak of anyone else, but personally I decided to close my twitter account because the amount of "twitter drama" has just gone through the roof. Twitter has always been a bit too much of a egg-throwing contest. Which I have been mostly been able to avoid by choosing to not follow people who's feeds is not quote tweeting people who the hate. But that doesn't work anymore, the drama slips through from sensible people too. I don't think mastodon will be any better, the whole microblogging idea just encourages stupid hot takes and misunderstanding others. It's just not good for humankind, and I'm glad I was able to get over my addiction.

g42gregory 4y ago

Given such a division of opinions on Twitter and other platforms, I can't help but think that we need the 2 of everything: 2 Twitters, 2 Facebooks, 2 Googles, 2 Apples, 2 Netflixes, etc... Some people will be on Twitter 1 and be happy. Others will be on Twitter 2 and be just as content. The additional wrinkle is that the majority of "engagement" is coming from Group 1 and Group 2 mudslinging each other. If we separate them on two different platforms, the temperature of the conversations will go down. We already do exactly the same thing at the international football (soccer) competitions: you always sit the fans from opposing sides separately.

MiguelX413 4y ago
God no, one Twitter was already too many but it at least served it's role well as a quarantine to keep the rest of the internet safe from its users. Now that it can't even perform that role well, I don't see what use one, much less two, could possibly have.
- g42gregory 4y ago
  I suspect that Group 1 and Group 2 will have very different ideas on what is means to keep Internet safe for their corresponding constituents. Depending on whether you belong to Group 1 or Group 2, you should feel safe on your own corresponding platform. Now, if someone insists on telling the opposing group how they should be running their lives, this particular ability will be greatly reduced.
  - MiguelX413 4y ago
    I don't understand the problem with telling people how to live their lives. I don't see what's wrong with vegans, pro-lifers, and many groups from all parts of the spectrum trying to stop people from doing things they believe to be wrong. I'd rather people try to stop people from doing things they see to be wrong rather than nobody stop people from doing bad things. I say this as someone who isn't a member of either of those groups. Their premises may be wrong but that's not a good reason to not fight against what one sees as immoral. I don't know what you mean by “safe” either. I'm just referring to the unbearable culture of Twitter being contained on Twitter. Though I recently have started to suspect that it's really only sustainable by the algorithms of Twitter and not people alone.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hsn915 4y ago

Eh, twitter has never been more interesting. I first joined Twitter to follow a couple of people who did not publish blogs regularly so Twitter was where they were. Overtime I started finding other interesting people and I strated following them. But also overtime people were getting suspended for publishing unapproved opinions, so a lot of the interesting people I was following were practicing self-censorship and reducing the amount/frequency of content they post. The last week has been probably the most interesting week in terms of amount of content/interaction people are having and also just sighs of relief. People are no longer practicing self-censorship. Some of the engagment is really "meta" in that people are on Twitter to talk about Twitter, which is a weird thing and can't last for too long, but it's still interesting. It feels like the old school internet. You can login and always find something new and interesting. I've never been more excited about Twitter.

EVADKN 4y ago

I never understand Twitter timeline...sometimes posts hours ago appears on top ...sometimes I saw boring posts from strangers. And they are not ads

dkrich 4y ago
You can change to chronological order in timeline settings. The interesting thing is that if you do that you’ll quickly realize that most content is shit and you’ll still get suggested tweets filling the void

secure 4y ago

Lots of people are saying “you’ll come back” and “nobody is migrating for real”, and I have had the same opinion back when the Twitter deal was first announced and a few people moved over to Mastodon. But this time, it was very different: When the deal went through, a large part of my bubble really did move to Mastodon. This happened over a few days, and after the second or third day, my Twitter timeline was noticeably empty, and Mastodon is very alive instead. Of course I can’t predict if this sticks over the medium or long term, but for me, the situation is very clear: the people I care about are now on Mastodon. (I spent 10 years on Twitter, with over 4000 followers.)

needle0 4y ago

This was probably written with only the English-speaking part of Twitter in the writer's field of view. English in Twitter doesn't comprise even a third of all tweets ( https://www.vicinitas.io/blog/twitter-social-media-strategy-2018-research-100-million-tweets#language https://www.vicinitas.io/blog/twitter-social-media-strategy-... ); in fact, for pure tweets that aren't RTs nor replies, the above data even shows there are more Japanese tweets than there are in English, albeit by a slim margin. So, I agree it's about the people, but I don't see the people leaving, at least in the languages I use.

Kye 4y ago
I think anyone who spoke Japanese and was going to move already did during the series of Japanese migrations. Some of the biggest instances are from Japan.

dkrich 4y ago

To me this whole thing is pretty simple if you understand Elon’s history. He’s a master pumper/promoter much like P.T. Barnum. He’s currently attempting to inflate twitter’s perceived value after being forced to buy it by going on and on about how “alive” the site is now (despite no real changes) with much higher engagement. I’m betting he takes the site public again in <6 months. What’s amazing though is the endless obsession with Elon by people who should know better and how they will blindly believe any and all things he says. Not even a hint of skepticism. So I imagine the IPO will garner a ton of interest and buyers who will overpay. Still Elon will probably take a massive loss on this deal unless the market recovers a great deal by then. Both things can be true by the way- Twitter was a massive dumpster fire due to having no leadership for a long time AND Elon could be trying to pump and dump it. I think in general Twitter’s value is overestimated by its users by a huge factor. If it vanished it might leave a void in people’s day but it would not have any meaningful impact on society. FWIW I don’t think it will vanish because while it’s a relatively small portion of society who use it regularly those users are incredibly sticky and aren’t going anywhere. After all this is over and it’s taken public again I suspect it will be largely the same site.

thinkingemote 4y ago
Agreed. He has explicitly said he intends to take it public once it starts making money at the same levels of other tech companies (I.e. via reducing headcount and increasing income from users) I don't think he is worried about any loss it might make if it doesn't work out, people are putting too much value on that but only as it would impact the ability to get funds for future endeavours.
- mhoad 4y ago
  Why on earth would you say that someone is not worried about losing a $44 billion investment? That’s really not based on reality and the number of random changes they are currently pushing with zero strategic foresight makes it very clear that despite the blistering they are very much concerned.
- dkrich 4y ago
  Yep and if you look at it through that lens it all becomes fairly predictable. Bringing trump back presumably increases controversy and engagement. Everything he does between now and taking it public will be to maximize attention no matter what. Expect many more off the cuff decisions/announcements in the coming weeks. As an aside it would be interesting if after all this football spiking by the Elon fans about how dispensable Twitter engineers are (I don’t have a strong opinion on this not really knowing the answer) the site does end up suffering a major outage due to a hack or something else. Given the number of personnel and policy changes that have seemingly been made with no planning or thought the odds of that would seem better than zero.

mhoad 4y ago

I agree with the author, at the end of the day Twitter is not going to make it and it’s time to consider alternatives. They have in just 3 weeks: - Become one of the least desirable tech companies to work for. - Poisoned (probably beyond repair) their primary revenue source which I think was as high as 90% of their incoming cash. - Developed a reputation as being a new home for the worst people on the internet. - Lost many of their biggest content creators. - Lost a huge part of their critical workforce with lots of incredible hard to replace people. - Attracted a lot of attention from lawmakers around the world about their supposed non compliance with various laws. This isn’t the kind of situation they are going to magically just “hardcore” their way out of. These were almost certainly fatal mistakes.

MrRiddle 4y ago

pera 4y ago

I find the general negativity towards Mastodon in HN quite intriguing, considering that: - ActivityPub is basically a two-way RSS (which is the most beloved tech in this community) - It's open source and you can setup your own server in one afternoon - No sorting algorithms, no tracking, no ads - Relatively easy to customize/hack And to add to this, during this past month I have seen the majority of the infosec, astronomy, psychics, maths, biology, ecology communities migrating to Mastodon and for whatever reason my timeline is currently way more interesting and engaging than what Twitter offered to me. I'm not a big social network user and I guess that's why I don't understand the sentiment in this comment section, but I do enjoy using Mastodon at the moment and I hope it stays as cool as it is now :)

luckylion 4y ago
There's a daily thread of "Twitter is terrible, I'm moving to Mastodon" with lots of "yeah, Mastodon is great, Twitter will not exist 12 months from now" comments. What general negativity are you talking about?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
stareatgoats 4y ago
I think maybe you have fallen prey to the misconception that there is a single "HN crowd" or an "official" HN community position on anything. That may have been the case in the beginning, but as far as I can see, any position on any topic can find a sizeable following here, to a large degree depending on the title of the article, what comments gets the top spots, and how the conversation develops from there in each case. If at all anything of the sort, the HN crowd might be critical thinkers, and so will tend to upvote anything that picks any popular notion apart, laser focused on the negative aspects. Just a reflection.

stareatgoats 4y ago

> With Musk sucking the oxygen out of Twitter, the conversations are quickly moving elsewhere Actually, the organic traffic on twitter.com shows an upward trajectory over the last weeks [0]. So unless there is something wrong with the stats on semrush, this writer seems to be confusing facts with wishful thinking. [0] https://www.semrush.com/analytics/overview/?q=twitter.com&searchType=domain https://www.semrush.com/analytics/overview/?q=twitter.com&se...

mhoad 4y ago
Yes, a lot of people want to watch Rome burn in it’s final days. That’s a terrible metric to use when you think about it.
- MrRiddle 4y ago

bobcattz 4y ago

massive disinfo dont read comments ^^

jensgk 4y ago

Every buying or support decision you make is (in the end) political. Elon Musk uses his money to support his political agenda. If you are on Twitter you support Elon Musk and his political agenda. So if you do not support his views, get out. I did. It is as simple as that!

vixen99 4y ago

Why second guess what the moderation panels come up with ? As yet we have no idea.

icha 4y ago

Quite the opposite for me. Just started using it more actively for arts and other actually interesting stuff.

nemo44x 4y ago

For every person that self exiles to a fringe ghetto, a new person on Twitter will capture their audience.

benmmurphy 4y ago

It should be possible for the people who enjoy trump’s tweets to see them and those that don’t to avoid them. If that’s not possible there is something very wrong with a platform that seems to be based around following and gives you the option of blocking. if it’s possible for people to avoid trump easily then trump should have a voice on the platform.