10 ms·

“Twitter is going great” is being sunset

68 points by bertman 3y ago

fullshark 3y ago
These social networks never implode in spectacularly entertaining fashion, making the premise of the site flawed from beginning. They become zombies and collapse gradually, and then suddenly. Maybe twitter will reach a steady state of journalist echo chamber and survive for a bit longer but I don't understand why anyone spends time there unless they are advertising their work / doing public relations.
- bena 3y ago
  Exactly, everyone is expecting a Toys R Us moment, an Enron implosion, or an FTX scandal, but really, it's going to be IBM. It's going to be Atari. It's going to be MySpace, Digg, etc. It'll dwindle until it's a shell of its former self. And you won't be able to say exactly when it flipped from being alive to a zombie, but you'll know it's just different now.
- detaro 3y ago
  > They become zombies and collapse gradually, and then suddenly From an information perspective, that makes tracking it over time more relevant, not less. But of course also means it's a lot more work.
  - fullshark 3y ago
    Sure, such a website could exist, but it wouldn't be very fun to read or maintain. Seems like they created this site in a desire to partake in schadenfreude, not as an intellectual exercise.
  - nicky0 3y ago
    But they weren't really tracking changes in Twitter over time in any meaningful or informative way. The were just regurgitating a variety of anti-Elon headlines.
- butterfi 3y ago
  Sounds like the digital equivalent of a dead mall
  - cornhole34 3y ago
    thanks foldingideas
- satokema 3y ago
  The Japanese artists I follow to see their art once in a while apparently have not gotten the "Twitter is dying" memo.
  - majikaja 3y ago
    Japanese Twitter feels like manifestation of nation-level social dysfunction It's popular here because people don't feel able to express themselves to others outside of such an online platform. That and prostitution Elon wants to export this dystopia to the rest of the world... I joke, I doubt he has any clue about anything beyond the user counts.
- cxr 3y ago
  > They become zombies and collapse gradually, and then suddenly. I know people love to crib Hemingway's turn of phrase, but I don't think it makes sense here. Because it's the opposite, right? Sudden first, and then gradual. There's some big catalyst, and what remains afterwards slowly dissipates seemingly interminably towards zero. Even in notable cases like MySpace, which still exists, it's just "gradual" at first and then it's still "gradual" later, too.
  - fullshark 3y ago
    Hmm perhaps you are right. Elon acquisition of Twitter / Fox News acquisition of Myspace? not sure what was the catalyst there. Removing porn from Tumblr? All sudden shocks that lead to a long term decline and eventual irrelevance.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Depends. Livejournal, say, was gradual (long-term decline), then sudden (Russian takeover). Similar for freenode. Digg was sudden (truly disastrous redesign), then gradual (spiral into irrelevance). Tumblr was… kind of all over the place.
- eduction 3y ago
  >They become zombies and collapse gradually, and then suddenly. This is true for all companies though. It's arguably happening to Google now, and to Facebook, and, hard as it is to imagine, will happen to Apple some day, even if that day is decades away. GE was an icon of corporate competence in the 80s and is now in parts. Toyota has long seemed invincible but now has to make it through the transition to electric vehicles. Intel, Microsoft, etc. The hard part is not predicting that a corporation will decline, it's getting the timing right. (Just ask Michael Dell, who in the mid 1990s famously said he'd shut down Apple and sell it for parts if he was in charge. Red Herring magazine kept predicting Amazon's imminent collapse and at least half the people reading this don't even know who that is because they very much died first.)
- moogly 3y ago
  I think Digg did, but overall you're right.
the_doctah 3y ago
The existence of this site is just sad to me, with regards to the person who thought they needed to make it. Elon Derangement Syndrome is not as prolific as TDS but it's still definitely a thing.
- zimonnaman 3y ago
  [flagged]
- Eumenes 3y ago
  [flagged]
- kybernetyk 3y ago
  It's funny to see how Elon went from a hero of the left (omg EVs! omg Mars!) to a hated villain just because he took away (he didn't really though) their favorite web chat application.
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    Pretty sure his anti-labor stances, erratic and sometimes probably illegal behavior as a business leader (like, you know, tweeting lies that could influence stock prices), and constant over-promising and under-delivering had earned him quite a few haters well before Twitter. > hero of the left [...] omg Mars! "The left" doesn't give a shit about Mars. Some space-romantics who may or may not be on the left, give a shit about Mars.
    - comeonbro 3y ago
      Your explanation of why many people ended up disliking him is at least closer to the truth than the grandparent comment's baffling anticausal take of "people hate him because of what he did to Twitter". But it seems pretty absurd to charge Elon Musk with under-delivering. Do you not remember what the idea of an electric car meant prior to 2005? Or the possibilities and economics of reusable spacecraft just 5 years ago?
Satam 3y ago
The site that was so sure Twitter would crash and burn ends up biting the dust first.
- anothernewdude 3y ago
  My reading is that Twitter became so irrelevant that they can't be bothered keeping track of its news.
  - nbar1 3y ago
    If you actually read it you would see they simply said "real life intervened while the chaos never slowed"
  - nicky0 3y ago
    My reading is that the author had a moment of self awareness and realised maintaining a barely-trafficked site essentially powered by their own bitterness was not a healthy or satisfying pastime.
  - crubier 3y ago
    Sure, that's a good escape hatch lol. In practice barely anything changed on Twitter.
    - seba_dos1 3y ago
      In practice, my Mastodon feed stopped being just about some specific niches and reminds me of my Twitter feed a few years ago, while my current Twitter feed feels like cheap fast-food and to get to any kind of substantial discussion I often have to scroll down pass the "verified" replies. I also reach much more people with my Mastodon posts than Twitter ones; I guess on Twitter I'm now simply destined to fade into obscurity unless I decide to buy a blue mark. All of that thanks to Musk. But I'm not complaining, my microblog experience has gotten much better now that Mastodon's userbase is much more diverse.
    - joegahona 3y ago
      I would agree, up until last week. Giving Twitter Blue purchasers priority in "For You" and in replies is a truly vile experience.
1970-01-01 3y ago
This reads as if it were a 'The Onion' headline.
kybernetyk 3y ago
>Fewer than 1% of Twitter users are subscribed to Twitter Blue A 1% conversion rate is pretty much what I would expect from an online business.
- pwb25 3y ago
  and its still more than the 0% it was before
  - tuxie_ 3y ago
    Is that money worth the credibility they lost? The blue check used to be a status symbol, now accounts are putting out statements making it clear that they never paid for it.
    - comeonbro 3y ago
      Waging culture war against the blue-check class was one of his primary motivations for purchasing the site in the first place. As long as that move doesn't somehow end up solely responsible for burning the site to the ground, I can't imagine he'll regret it.
    - nicky0 3y ago
      The old blue checks are grieving that they no longer have special treatment and their voices are no longer elevated. They are now just like the common plebs. It's an adjustment process.
    - seba_dos1 3y ago
      Status symbol? The blue check used to verify that the notable person behind the account is who they claim to be. Now it lacks any meaning other than "I paid $8 for Twitter".
- quartz 3y ago
  It does seem perfectly in line with the 1% rule[1] for social networks. In this case I'm not sure if a user is a content creator or not so it's a little unclear if this is 1% of 1% or 1% of all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
tekla 3y ago
Hilarious anyone even cared enough to bother making something as dumb as this site.
- VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
  people really get themselves so worked up and upset about things that they feel the need to go make something idiotic like this
  - mcphage 3y ago
    At least they didn't spend $44 billion on it...
- 0zemp2c 3y ago
  whats even worse is that they never seem interested in assigning blame on Twitter's CEO and Board Elon only offered to buy Twitter...that offer had to be accepted (and no, the Board was not "legally obligated" to accept the offer)
flippinburgers 3y ago
[flagged]
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nemo44x 3y ago
> Deluded billionaire Elon Musk continues to spew stupid ideas that exhausted engineers are forced to rush through half baked, the company moves inexorably closer to bankruptcy... He has thrown a lot of ideas at the wall, and some that were not well thought out, but it looks like some of them are actually smart like affiliations and allowing media to charge a small fee per article and for allowing content creators to sell subscriptions. Twitter isn't that serious of a thing - it's OK to try things and see what happens. At least they are shipping product now. > white supremacists increasingly dominate everyone's feeds I don't really see white supremacists in my feed which may say more about this person than they like. Maybe there's a redefinition of that too? I think there's certainly a better diversity of opinions on Twitter now. > the platform’s reliability plummets ever downwards I haven't noticed any issues. Has anyone else? > and we need a break. That's good - find something productive and positive to do with your time. Hoping to bask in others failures is a very negative way to live your life and can't possibly be good for your mental health. Go outside and help a person. Be a positive force in the society you wish to see instead of trying to tear down things. If Elon and Twitter and the white supremacists you see everywhere are bothering you then it's probably best to stay away and do something positive in your life.
hbn 3y ago
> white supremacists increasingly dominate everyone's feeds Either I'm the one person who isn't seeing this, or this person has a very deranged definition of "white supremacist." I get AI grifter guys in my feed but I can't recall seeing unironic white supremacists. I'm not a fan of Elon but these people that made their entire personality trying to demonstrate how Twitter is dead are the same ones who were saying it would happen as soon as Musk was confirmed to take over, and if anything are disappointed it's not going as badly as they predicated so they need to make things seem worse than they are. The biggest problems I've had with Twitter since Elon took over is having to see his unfunny jokes like tweets saying which planet they're sent from or making the logo a doge head for a few days.
- vadansky 3y ago
  Agreed, I hate how people just throw this out like it's fact and everyone applauds. My twitter feed before was a ton of artists I follow, my twitter feed now? A bunch of artists I follow.
  - N1ckFG 3y ago
    I bet most of the community here defaults to Following (non-curated timeline). Mine's gotten a lot quieter, without as many interesting threads cutting across fields, but talking to friends hasn't changed. However I've seen the occasional literal, ideological N*zi pop up in New Twitter's For You (curated timeline), which I suspect is down to using metrics susceptible to rage-farming.
- nbar1 3y ago
  People are creating an alternate reality in their own head.
- bfeynman 3y ago
  Maybe your feed is curated more, but it's definitely true that visiting a tweet url as an anonymous user, almost no matter what the tweet is about or who tweeted it, when you scroll down it starts just showing suggested tweets/topics, and not kidding they are almost all paid blue checkmark right wing provocateurs. And part of this was unintentional in promoting "paid" checkmark people but the vast majority of those are a certain type of person who want to shout loudly.
shri_krishna 3y ago
I don't see Twitter going down anytime soon. It has noticeably become much better (though there were some issues initially) feature wise (especially with Twitter Blue). Disappointed with API pricing as it completely destroyed the Indie Hacker community. Maybe this is bound to happen with most services sooner or later as everyone is realizing that data is becoming more important than ever (Reddit/Stack Overflow is now charging for API access too). Won't be surprised if Elon uses Twitter data as base dataset for his new AI venture while restricting others from accessing it for building their own models.
- bfeynman 3y ago
  How has it become better? AFAIK the number of genuine interactions on site has significantly decreased with platform exodus. The model of being recommended things that people for a checkmark to hope to show you is also definitely orthogonal to how social network interactions foster.
  - shri_krishna 3y ago
    > How has it become better? AFAIK the number of genuine interactions on site has significantly decreased with platform exodus Then that only means you were surrounded by your own small bubble. I had taken a hiatus from Twitter because I despised how the "algorithm" banned accounts that I was following earlier only because it was from the right of political spectrum in my Country (India). One of those accounts was an account that set right historical facts about Indian history which was distorted by leftist historians after India gained Independence. These new facts were cross verified and revealed to be true. So what did Twitter India decide to do? It banned the said account. It was only after Elon took over, all those accounts were re-activated. So I have an opposite experience to you. Most of the accounts that I followed were banned by erstwhile regime have been now reinstated. So it is an opposite of an exodus for me. Quite frankly, this is not just me in India who felt this. I am pretty sure it was widespread as Twitter was extremely left leaning in its ideology (from employees to the CEO). There was actual stifling of alternative viewpoints - though many on that side of the political spectrum will refuse to even acknowledge this. Anyways I only brought this up to counter your point on there being some "platform exodus". There is only disgruntled developers who don't like Elon (especially after he openly said he would prefer voting Republican) and his centre-right leaning ideology and left the site. There is no "rational" reason for the hate. Sorry to put it bluntly. I have always tried to be restricted in what I say lest I get "cancelled" by the woke mob (have been banned twice on HN itself for having contrary opinions). But at this point, I don't care anymore if people feel hurt by my ideological/political/social stances. I am tired of being censored every step of the way. By both Big Tech and Government. I respect your ideological point of view and I hope to get the same treatment back in return. At one point I identified with liberal causes, of being "for free speech" and not against it. Sadly, I find myself moving farther and farther away from what has now become of liberal ideology. It is no longer liberal in that old sense. It has turned fascist. And I can't stand that any more. I find myself on the right side of the aisle which ironically is "for free speech" while the liberal left, which was supposed to stand "for free speech" has adopted cancel culture and censorship as tools to counter opposing viewpoints. People who refuse to see this or accept this are just living in delusion. Sorry for the rant.
JyB 3y ago
Well, that's embarrassing.
GreedClarifies 3y ago
If they had any sense of humor they would put an "ironic" meme right at the top of their post.
Kye 3y ago
It's like everyone commenting here just found out about this site and didn't scroll down at all. Sure, this post is little venty, but the rest seem quite level headed. Even the second post ever in November only says Twitter might break based on the first post where much of the company was fired.
0zemp2c 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I don't think it's hard to guess: it's a sensational submission on an extremely well-trodden topic. That's not interesting in HN's sense of the word. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
yinser 3y ago
There’s always shaking your fist at the sky at Starlink! Do not go gentle into that good night. We need people like you out there doing… checks notes well we need people like you!
bentlegen 3y ago
I decided to quit Twitter after Elon decided it was appropriate for him to deface the public profile of a national news institution (the CBC). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/musk-feuds-with-another-public-broadcaster-labels-cbc-69-government-funded/amp/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/musk-feuds-with-... If you upset Twitter’s boss, there is a non-zero chance he will retaliate by using his mod powers to customize your profile to say what he wants. This is undisputably true. The old guard may have banned accounts for reasons you may have disagreed with, but imagine if they went in and wrote “huge loser” on someone’s profile in a way you could never remove unless you capitulated to the CEO’s personal demands. I don’t understand how anyone can rationally claim that this system is “better”, unless you’re a partisan who’s happy as long as the victims continue to be people you disagree with.
- the_doctah 3y ago
  He applied a factual label to the account. The real question is why would you be upset about it?
  - bentlegen 3y ago
    Here’s an example of a factual label: I was born a biological man. If I choose to omit my gender from my profile, and Elon insists that my biological gender must be present because of some comments I made — and only on my particular profile, of course — he is both factually correct and executing a kind of political reprisal. It’s the same thing. It doesn’t matter if the label is factual or not. It’s the intimidation intent behind the label. Elon is not highlighting, for example, how much funding Tesla receives. He’s selectively applying labels with a political calculus. But I believe you already know that.
    - dmonitor 3y ago
      What you're describing is transphobic. It's a completely different kind of thing. This isn't discrimination.
      - 3y ago
RNCTX 3y ago
Maybe they can't log into Twitter anymore (Twitter's auth flow is entirely broken if you had SMS 2FA before the Musk takeover and pay-to-play. It won't let you log in with the only 2FA method you have, and redirects you to a form to reclaim a locked account after the failure which... requires you to be logged in).
AraceliHarker 3y ago
The API was paid for yesterday and supposedly eliminated malicious bots, but in reality, we find a lot of bots that respond to trends, for example.
draw_down 3y ago
[dead]

68 points by bertman 3y ago

These social networks never implode in spectacularly entertaining fashion, making the premise of the site flawed from beginning. They become zombies and collapse gradually, and then suddenly. Maybe twitter will reach a steady state of journalist echo chamber and survive for a bit longer but I don't understand why anyone spends time there unless they are advertising their work / doing public relations.

bena 3y ago
Exactly, everyone is expecting a Toys R Us moment, an Enron implosion, or an FTX scandal, but really, it's going to be IBM. It's going to be Atari. It's going to be MySpace, Digg, etc. It'll dwindle until it's a shell of its former self. And you won't be able to say exactly when it flipped from being alive to a zombie, but you'll know it's just different now.
detaro 3y ago
> They become zombies and collapse gradually, and then suddenly From an information perspective, that makes tracking it over time more relevant, not less. But of course also means it's a lot more work.
- fullshark 3y ago
  Sure, such a website could exist, but it wouldn't be very fun to read or maintain. Seems like they created this site in a desire to partake in schadenfreude, not as an intellectual exercise.
- nicky0 3y ago
  But they weren't really tracking changes in Twitter over time in any meaningful or informative way. The were just regurgitating a variety of anti-Elon headlines.
butterfi 3y ago
Sounds like the digital equivalent of a dead mall
- cornhole34 3y ago
  thanks foldingideas
satokema 3y ago
The Japanese artists I follow to see their art once in a while apparently have not gotten the "Twitter is dying" memo.
- majikaja 3y ago
  Japanese Twitter feels like manifestation of nation-level social dysfunction It's popular here because people don't feel able to express themselves to others outside of such an online platform. That and prostitution Elon wants to export this dystopia to the rest of the world... I joke, I doubt he has any clue about anything beyond the user counts.
cxr 3y ago
> They become zombies and collapse gradually, and then suddenly. I know people love to crib Hemingway's turn of phrase, but I don't think it makes sense here. Because it's the opposite, right? Sudden first, and then gradual. There's some big catalyst, and what remains afterwards slowly dissipates seemingly interminably towards zero. Even in notable cases like MySpace, which still exists, it's just "gradual" at first and then it's still "gradual" later, too.
- fullshark 3y ago
  Hmm perhaps you are right. Elon acquisition of Twitter / Fox News acquisition of Myspace? not sure what was the catalyst there. Removing porn from Tumblr? All sudden shocks that lead to a long term decline and eventual irrelevance.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Depends. Livejournal, say, was gradual (long-term decline), then sudden (Russian takeover). Similar for freenode. Digg was sudden (truly disastrous redesign), then gradual (spiral into irrelevance). Tumblr was… kind of all over the place.
eduction 3y ago
>They become zombies and collapse gradually, and then suddenly. This is true for all companies though. It's arguably happening to Google now, and to Facebook, and, hard as it is to imagine, will happen to Apple some day, even if that day is decades away. GE was an icon of corporate competence in the 80s and is now in parts. Toyota has long seemed invincible but now has to make it through the transition to electric vehicles. Intel, Microsoft, etc. The hard part is not predicting that a corporation will decline, it's getting the timing right. (Just ask Michael Dell, who in the mid 1990s famously said he'd shut down Apple and sell it for parts if he was in charge. Red Herring magazine kept predicting Amazon's imminent collapse and at least half the people reading this don't even know who that is because they very much died first.)
moogly 3y ago
I think Digg did, but overall you're right.

the_doctah 3y ago

The existence of this site is just sad to me, with regards to the person who thought they needed to make it. Elon Derangement Syndrome is not as prolific as TDS but it's still definitely a thing.

zimonnaman 3y ago
[flagged]
Eumenes 3y ago
[flagged]
kybernetyk 3y ago
It's funny to see how Elon went from a hero of the left (omg EVs! omg Mars!) to a hated villain just because he took away (he didn't really though) their favorite web chat application.
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  Pretty sure his anti-labor stances, erratic and sometimes probably illegal behavior as a business leader (like, you know, tweeting lies that could influence stock prices), and constant over-promising and under-delivering had earned him quite a few haters well before Twitter. > hero of the left [...] omg Mars! "The left" doesn't give a shit about Mars. Some space-romantics who may or may not be on the left, give a shit about Mars.
  - comeonbro 3y ago
    Your explanation of why many people ended up disliking him is at least closer to the truth than the grandparent comment's baffling anticausal take of "people hate him because of what he did to Twitter". But it seems pretty absurd to charge Elon Musk with under-delivering. Do you not remember what the idea of an electric car meant prior to 2005? Or the possibilities and economics of reusable spacecraft just 5 years ago?

Satam 3y ago

The site that was so sure Twitter would crash and burn ends up biting the dust first.

anothernewdude 3y ago
My reading is that Twitter became so irrelevant that they can't be bothered keeping track of its news.
- nbar1 3y ago
  If you actually read it you would see they simply said "real life intervened while the chaos never slowed"
- nicky0 3y ago
  My reading is that the author had a moment of self awareness and realised maintaining a barely-trafficked site essentially powered by their own bitterness was not a healthy or satisfying pastime.
- crubier 3y ago
  Sure, that's a good escape hatch lol. In practice barely anything changed on Twitter.
  - seba_dos1 3y ago
    In practice, my Mastodon feed stopped being just about some specific niches and reminds me of my Twitter feed a few years ago, while my current Twitter feed feels like cheap fast-food and to get to any kind of substantial discussion I often have to scroll down pass the "verified" replies. I also reach much more people with my Mastodon posts than Twitter ones; I guess on Twitter I'm now simply destined to fade into obscurity unless I decide to buy a blue mark. All of that thanks to Musk. But I'm not complaining, my microblog experience has gotten much better now that Mastodon's userbase is much more diverse.
  - joegahona 3y ago
    I would agree, up until last week. Giving Twitter Blue purchasers priority in "For You" and in replies is a truly vile experience.

1970-01-01 3y ago

This reads as if it were a 'The Onion' headline.

kybernetyk 3y ago

>Fewer than 1% of Twitter users are subscribed to Twitter Blue A 1% conversion rate is pretty much what I would expect from an online business.

pwb25 3y ago
and its still more than the 0% it was before
- tuxie_ 3y ago
  Is that money worth the credibility they lost? The blue check used to be a status symbol, now accounts are putting out statements making it clear that they never paid for it.
  - comeonbro 3y ago
    Waging culture war against the blue-check class was one of his primary motivations for purchasing the site in the first place. As long as that move doesn't somehow end up solely responsible for burning the site to the ground, I can't imagine he'll regret it.
  - nicky0 3y ago
    The old blue checks are grieving that they no longer have special treatment and their voices are no longer elevated. They are now just like the common plebs. It's an adjustment process.
  - seba_dos1 3y ago
    Status symbol? The blue check used to verify that the notable person behind the account is who they claim to be. Now it lacks any meaning other than "I paid $8 for Twitter".
quartz 3y ago
It does seem perfectly in line with the 1% rule[1] for social networks. In this case I'm not sure if a user is a content creator or not so it's a little unclear if this is 1% of 1% or 1% of all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule

tekla 3y ago

Hilarious anyone even cared enough to bother making something as dumb as this site.

VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
people really get themselves so worked up and upset about things that they feel the need to go make something idiotic like this
- mcphage 3y ago
  At least they didn't spend $44 billion on it...
0zemp2c 3y ago
whats even worse is that they never seem interested in assigning blame on Twitter's CEO and Board Elon only offered to buy Twitter...that offer had to be accepted (and no, the Board was not "legally obligated" to accept the offer)

flippinburgers 3y ago

[flagged]

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nemo44x 3y ago

> Deluded billionaire Elon Musk continues to spew stupid ideas that exhausted engineers are forced to rush through half baked, the company moves inexorably closer to bankruptcy... He has thrown a lot of ideas at the wall, and some that were not well thought out, but it looks like some of them are actually smart like affiliations and allowing media to charge a small fee per article and for allowing content creators to sell subscriptions. Twitter isn't that serious of a thing - it's OK to try things and see what happens. At least they are shipping product now. > white supremacists increasingly dominate everyone's feeds I don't really see white supremacists in my feed which may say more about this person than they like. Maybe there's a redefinition of that too? I think there's certainly a better diversity of opinions on Twitter now. > the platform’s reliability plummets ever downwards I haven't noticed any issues. Has anyone else? > and we need a break. That's good - find something productive and positive to do with your time. Hoping to bask in others failures is a very negative way to live your life and can't possibly be good for your mental health. Go outside and help a person. Be a positive force in the society you wish to see instead of trying to tear down things. If Elon and Twitter and the white supremacists you see everywhere are bothering you then it's probably best to stay away and do something positive in your life.

hbn 3y ago

> white supremacists increasingly dominate everyone's feeds Either I'm the one person who isn't seeing this, or this person has a very deranged definition of "white supremacist." I get AI grifter guys in my feed but I can't recall seeing unironic white supremacists. I'm not a fan of Elon but these people that made their entire personality trying to demonstrate how Twitter is dead are the same ones who were saying it would happen as soon as Musk was confirmed to take over, and if anything are disappointed it's not going as badly as they predicated so they need to make things seem worse than they are. The biggest problems I've had with Twitter since Elon took over is having to see his unfunny jokes like tweets saying which planet they're sent from or making the logo a doge head for a few days.

vadansky 3y ago
Agreed, I hate how people just throw this out like it's fact and everyone applauds. My twitter feed before was a ton of artists I follow, my twitter feed now? A bunch of artists I follow.
- N1ckFG 3y ago
  I bet most of the community here defaults to Following (non-curated timeline). Mine's gotten a lot quieter, without as many interesting threads cutting across fields, but talking to friends hasn't changed. However I've seen the occasional literal, ideological N*zi pop up in New Twitter's For You (curated timeline), which I suspect is down to using metrics susceptible to rage-farming.
nbar1 3y ago
People are creating an alternate reality in their own head.
bfeynman 3y ago
Maybe your feed is curated more, but it's definitely true that visiting a tweet url as an anonymous user, almost no matter what the tweet is about or who tweeted it, when you scroll down it starts just showing suggested tweets/topics, and not kidding they are almost all paid blue checkmark right wing provocateurs. And part of this was unintentional in promoting "paid" checkmark people but the vast majority of those are a certain type of person who want to shout loudly.

shri_krishna 3y ago

I don't see Twitter going down anytime soon. It has noticeably become much better (though there were some issues initially) feature wise (especially with Twitter Blue). Disappointed with API pricing as it completely destroyed the Indie Hacker community. Maybe this is bound to happen with most services sooner or later as everyone is realizing that data is becoming more important than ever (Reddit/Stack Overflow is now charging for API access too). Won't be surprised if Elon uses Twitter data as base dataset for his new AI venture while restricting others from accessing it for building their own models.

bfeynman 3y ago
How has it become better? AFAIK the number of genuine interactions on site has significantly decreased with platform exodus. The model of being recommended things that people for a checkmark to hope to show you is also definitely orthogonal to how social network interactions foster.
- shri_krishna 3y ago
  > How has it become better? AFAIK the number of genuine interactions on site has significantly decreased with platform exodus Then that only means you were surrounded by your own small bubble. I had taken a hiatus from Twitter because I despised how the "algorithm" banned accounts that I was following earlier only because it was from the right of political spectrum in my Country (India). One of those accounts was an account that set right historical facts about Indian history which was distorted by leftist historians after India gained Independence. These new facts were cross verified and revealed to be true. So what did Twitter India decide to do? It banned the said account. It was only after Elon took over, all those accounts were re-activated. So I have an opposite experience to you. Most of the accounts that I followed were banned by erstwhile regime have been now reinstated. So it is an opposite of an exodus for me. Quite frankly, this is not just me in India who felt this. I am pretty sure it was widespread as Twitter was extremely left leaning in its ideology (from employees to the CEO). There was actual stifling of alternative viewpoints - though many on that side of the political spectrum will refuse to even acknowledge this. Anyways I only brought this up to counter your point on there being some "platform exodus". There is only disgruntled developers who don't like Elon (especially after he openly said he would prefer voting Republican) and his centre-right leaning ideology and left the site. There is no "rational" reason for the hate. Sorry to put it bluntly. I have always tried to be restricted in what I say lest I get "cancelled" by the woke mob (have been banned twice on HN itself for having contrary opinions). But at this point, I don't care anymore if people feel hurt by my ideological/political/social stances. I am tired of being censored every step of the way. By both Big Tech and Government. I respect your ideological point of view and I hope to get the same treatment back in return. At one point I identified with liberal causes, of being "for free speech" and not against it. Sadly, I find myself moving farther and farther away from what has now become of liberal ideology. It is no longer liberal in that old sense. It has turned fascist. And I can't stand that any more. I find myself on the right side of the aisle which ironically is "for free speech" while the liberal left, which was supposed to stand "for free speech" has adopted cancel culture and censorship as tools to counter opposing viewpoints. People who refuse to see this or accept this are just living in delusion. Sorry for the rant.

JyB 3y ago

Well, that's embarrassing.

GreedClarifies 3y ago

If they had any sense of humor they would put an "ironic" meme right at the top of their post.

Kye 3y ago

It's like everyone commenting here just found out about this site and didn't scroll down at all. Sure, this post is little venty, but the rest seem quite level headed. Even the second post ever in November only says Twitter might break based on the first post where much of the company was fired.

0zemp2c 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I don't think it's hard to guess: it's a sensational submission on an extremely well-trodden topic. That's not interesting in HN's sense of the word. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

yinser 3y ago

There’s always shaking your fist at the sky at Starlink! Do not go gentle into that good night. We need people like you out there doing… checks notes well we need people like you!

bentlegen 3y ago

I decided to quit Twitter after Elon decided it was appropriate for him to deface the public profile of a national news institution (the CBC). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/musk-feuds-with-another-public-broadcaster-labels-cbc-69-government-funded/amp/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/musk-feuds-with-... If you upset Twitter’s boss, there is a non-zero chance he will retaliate by using his mod powers to customize your profile to say what he wants. This is undisputably true. The old guard may have banned accounts for reasons you may have disagreed with, but imagine if they went in and wrote “huge loser” on someone’s profile in a way you could never remove unless you capitulated to the CEO’s personal demands. I don’t understand how anyone can rationally claim that this system is “better”, unless you’re a partisan who’s happy as long as the victims continue to be people you disagree with.

the_doctah 3y ago
He applied a factual label to the account. The real question is why would you be upset about it?
- bentlegen 3y ago
  Here’s an example of a factual label: I was born a biological man. If I choose to omit my gender from my profile, and Elon insists that my biological gender must be present because of some comments I made — and only on my particular profile, of course — he is both factually correct and executing a kind of political reprisal. It’s the same thing. It doesn’t matter if the label is factual or not. It’s the intimidation intent behind the label. Elon is not highlighting, for example, how much funding Tesla receives. He’s selectively applying labels with a political calculus. But I believe you already know that.
  - dmonitor 3y ago
    What you're describing is transphobic. It's a completely different kind of thing. This isn't discrimination.
    - 3y ago

RNCTX 3y ago

Maybe they can't log into Twitter anymore (Twitter's auth flow is entirely broken if you had SMS 2FA before the Musk takeover and pay-to-play. It won't let you log in with the only 2FA method you have, and redirects you to a form to reclaim a locked account after the failure which... requires you to be logged in).

AraceliHarker 3y ago

The API was paid for yesterday and supposedly eliminated malicious bots, but in reality, we find a lot of bots that respond to trends, for example.

draw_down 3y ago

[dead]