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Am I the only one who thought that there were no changes in Twitter due to the acquisition and the platform was pretty bad all time around? A question that see

Am I the only one who thought that there were no changes in Twitter due to the acquisition and the platform was pretty bad all time around? A question that seems loaded but I've seen people lamenting the "good old times", but these times were indeed old, but not good, especially if you tried to have a nuanced position in debates.

Kye 4y ago
It's been a pit since around 2014, ramped up to the garbage heap in 2016, then went absolutely off the rails in 2020. All Musk did before now is formalize how bad it was by decree. This is different because it essentially undid what a lot of holdouts were using it for. I don't think most creators were as dependent on it as they believed, but it wasn't entirely learned helplessness. It's going to take work to weave their platforms back together now that they can't link to anything on Twitter.
- lbeltrame 4y ago
  To be honest, I experienced what it meant to be on the "bad side of the fence", in my little universe (20 following, a few hundred followers of which mostly I don't know who they are) well before Musk. It was pretty stressful if you chose to engage with the platform. But I decided that my account has basically zero value and it will be phased out after August 2023 (long story on why).
ProjectArcturis 4y ago
There were good pockets. If you followed the right people and set it to chronological display, it was quite useful.
- lbeltrame 4y ago
  Currently the only one I've found that is even remotely decent is a sub-set of Japanese content creators that sticks only to what they are doing (a little obsessively, perhaps) and little else. Everything else, a dumpster fire. Especially after these three years.
indemnity 4y ago
I follow mostly tech people (makers, not influencers), and it’s been great. All I needed to do was mute political threads when they happened (left or right), and I got a lot of interesting stuff out of it. Now it’s a lot of tribal bullshit. I wish I could mute Elon Musk and what he does across the entire Internet. And that’s speaking as someone right of centre. I’m just tired of his antics.
- lbeltrame 4y ago
  Personally I don't get either the Musk cheering, or the hatred. I cared little about him. And about muting, I put myself on a smallish Mastodon instance but I've had to mute, filter and block loads of people these days to prevent any inch of politics from appearing in the feed. I hope like this I can have a "curated" experience that is more enjoyable (I used to have an account somewhere else, then the instance turned into political activism and I just deleted it).
  - WeylandYutani 4y ago
    The reality is that Musk is a billionaire leading a cult which has a lot of powerful people in it. You can ignore things but that doesn't make them go away. See 1933.
    - lbeltrame 4y ago
      I didn't ignore this at all. In fact, I raised my (little) voice against the widespread loss of civil liberties (those who live in the USA have no idea, really) that were carried out in the past three years all across the world, following a foolish move by a poor, incompetent PM. And EM had nothing to do with this. The press, the journalists, and the "civil society" that prided itself to be the only barrier against the "dangers to society" happily complied. And those who weren't conspiracy theorists were considered at the same level as the true loons (which were always there, but a minority). All of this with widespread support from the society at large, including the social media platforms like Twitter. I'm not talking about the Twitter Files. I'm talking about a "law of unintended consequences" where independently, most people shared the same mindset and acted accordingly (no conspiracy at all, IOW). Those journalists that lament the loss of freedom with EM, they may have a point. However, where were they back then? I have a hard time believing them due to this. There are however some exceptions, which I happen to know, that were always consistent in their views, luckily.
d23 4y ago
The site had its problems and employees made mistakes. The "twitter files" revealed something mundane and human behind the scenes: multiple people working on difficult moderation problems and trying to solve them as best they could. There was at least an attempt to do the right thing. That's gone out the window.
- lbeltrame 4y ago
  I don't agree: there were so-called respectable (because no one saw them as loons, nor sociopaths) people spreading lies and misinformation to fuel panic and subsequent engagement, without any sanction. Not the former POTUS, nor the people quoted in the Twitter Files. I'm talking about professional fear-mongers like Dr.Eric Feigl-Ding. Personally I wouldn't want a removal of said posts (nor of the others), but the dissonance, at least with these people, was great.

Kye 4y ago

It's been a pit since around 2014, ramped up to the garbage heap in 2016, then went absolutely off the rails in 2020. All Musk did before now is formalize how bad it was by decree. This is different because it essentially undid what a lot of holdouts were using it for. I don't think most creators were as dependent on it as they believed, but it wasn't entirely learned helplessness. It's going to take work to weave their platforms back together now that they can't link to anything on Twitter.

lbeltrame 4y ago
To be honest, I experienced what it meant to be on the "bad side of the fence", in my little universe (20 following, a few hundred followers of which mostly I don't know who they are) well before Musk. It was pretty stressful if you chose to engage with the platform. But I decided that my account has basically zero value and it will be phased out after August 2023 (long story on why).

ProjectArcturis 4y ago

There were good pockets. If you followed the right people and set it to chronological display, it was quite useful.

lbeltrame 4y ago
Currently the only one I've found that is even remotely decent is a sub-set of Japanese content creators that sticks only to what they are doing (a little obsessively, perhaps) and little else. Everything else, a dumpster fire. Especially after these three years.

indemnity 4y ago

I follow mostly tech people (makers, not influencers), and it’s been great. All I needed to do was mute political threads when they happened (left or right), and I got a lot of interesting stuff out of it. Now it’s a lot of tribal bullshit. I wish I could mute Elon Musk and what he does across the entire Internet. And that’s speaking as someone right of centre. I’m just tired of his antics.

lbeltrame 4y ago
Personally I don't get either the Musk cheering, or the hatred. I cared little about him. And about muting, I put myself on a smallish Mastodon instance but I've had to mute, filter and block loads of people these days to prevent any inch of politics from appearing in the feed. I hope like this I can have a "curated" experience that is more enjoyable (I used to have an account somewhere else, then the instance turned into political activism and I just deleted it).
- WeylandYutani 4y ago
  The reality is that Musk is a billionaire leading a cult which has a lot of powerful people in it. You can ignore things but that doesn't make them go away. See 1933.
  - lbeltrame 4y ago
    I didn't ignore this at all. In fact, I raised my (little) voice against the widespread loss of civil liberties (those who live in the USA have no idea, really) that were carried out in the past three years all across the world, following a foolish move by a poor, incompetent PM. And EM had nothing to do with this. The press, the journalists, and the "civil society" that prided itself to be the only barrier against the "dangers to society" happily complied. And those who weren't conspiracy theorists were considered at the same level as the true loons (which were always there, but a minority). All of this with widespread support from the society at large, including the social media platforms like Twitter. I'm not talking about the Twitter Files. I'm talking about a "law of unintended consequences" where independently, most people shared the same mindset and acted accordingly (no conspiracy at all, IOW). Those journalists that lament the loss of freedom with EM, they may have a point. However, where were they back then? I have a hard time believing them due to this. There are however some exceptions, which I happen to know, that were always consistent in their views, luckily.

d23 4y ago

The site had its problems and employees made mistakes. The "twitter files" revealed something mundane and human behind the scenes: multiple people working on difficult moderation problems and trying to solve them as best they could. There was at least an attempt to do the right thing. That's gone out the window.

lbeltrame 4y ago
I don't agree: there were so-called respectable (because no one saw them as loons, nor sociopaths) people spreading lies and misinformation to fuel panic and subsequent engagement, without any sanction. Not the former POTUS, nor the people quoted in the Twitter Files. I'm talking about professional fear-mongers like Dr.Eric Feigl-Ding. Personally I wouldn't want a removal of said posts (nor of the others), but the dissonance, at least with these people, was great.