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Why is everyone so down on Twitter? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Elon is as evil as you think/people say he is: does that stop Twitter from "worki

by mikece 4y ago

Why is everyone so down on Twitter? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Elon is as evil as you think/people say he is: does that stop Twitter from "working?" I've heard it said that "Facebook is for talking to people you know and Twitter is for talking to people you don't know" and I think there's a lot of truth to that. Searching for topics by hashtag is a powerful use of twitter (one my company's IT staff actually uses as an early warning of AWS issues because people are tweeting to the #awsoutage hashtag). Sure, people with large followings and evil in their hearts can spout ignorant rhetoric but I'm not required to see that stuff in order for Twitter to be useful to me. "Is it possible to create a social network that brings together people from all walks of life, like the old school social networks did in the beginning?" I think we'll see more and more focused communities of interest popping up which is ironic: as the means to communicate increases the number of people we have in our social circles will decrease for various reasons. There is no digital replacement for meeting people in the real world.

viraptor 4y ago
> does that stop Twitter from "working?" Sometimes yes. Some people I followed were banned because... they mentioned mastodon I guess? Will someone else disappear for a random reason tomorrow? Maybe. If you don't know what the rules are today because they'll be announced tomorrow, that's not really "working". Meanwhile for the community I follow, almost everybody but crossposters is gone. Effectively for my interests, Twitter is dead, even if it contains many more people / is more successful overall.
rsynnott 4y ago
Musk has said that posts from people who pay him $8 a month will be prioritised, and people they block will be downmodded. Now, Musk says a lot of things, few of them true, but that sort of pay-for-attention mechanic is extremely corrosive to the functioning of a social network. And then of course there’s just the constant arbitrary nonsense, the increasing flakiness of twitter… as someone who rather enjoyed twitter, I’m pretty much expecting it to die and have moved accordingly.

by mikece 4y ago

viraptor 4y ago

> does that stop Twitter from "working?" Sometimes yes. Some people I followed were banned because... they mentioned mastodon I guess? Will someone else disappear for a random reason tomorrow? Maybe. If you don't know what the rules are today because they'll be announced tomorrow, that's not really "working". Meanwhile for the community I follow, almost everybody but crossposters is gone. Effectively for my interests, Twitter is dead, even if it contains many more people / is more successful overall.

rsynnott 4y ago

Musk has said that posts from people who pay him $8 a month will be prioritised, and people they block will be downmodded. Now, Musk says a lot of things, few of them true, but that sort of pay-for-attention mechanic is extremely corrosive to the functioning of a social network. And then of course there’s just the constant arbitrary nonsense, the increasing flakiness of twitter… as someone who rather enjoyed twitter, I’m pretty much expecting it to die and have moved accordingly.