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Bear in mind that Twitter reply threads are now dominated by Elon musk fans, because people who pay for Twitter have their replies shown first. People who aren'

Bear in mind that Twitter reply threads are now dominated by Elon musk fans, because people who pay for Twitter have their replies shown first. People who aren't willing to do that don't really bother engaging with stuff like this any more, or if they do they get buried. So Wales being under attack on Twitter is sad but doesn't necessarily represent "public opinion". I think we are in the last days of major figures like Jimmy Wales still treating Twitter as a respectable arena for public engagement.

hutzlibu 3y ago
"because people who pay for Twitter have their replies shown first" I don't really go to Twitter, so I don't know, but am curious: Is this an established fact? A quick search did not show anything official confirming this.
- concordDance 3y ago
  https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue > Prioritized rankings in conversations and search: Tweets that you interact with will receive a small boost in their ranking. Additionally, your replies will receive a boost that ranks them closer to the top. Twitter Blue subscribers will appear in the Verified tab within other users’ notifications tab which highlights replies, mentions, and engagement from Blue subscribers. The rationale was that paying $8/month is the best way to filter out bots, but...
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    Oh, so it officially is "pay to win" now. Nice. Free speech to everyone, but if you actually want to be heard, you have to pay up. At least it is somewhat honest and not, oh, we didn't meant to do this, in our effort to convince more people into paying.
    - mcv 3y ago
      So why do we still post Twitter conversations here? Shouldn't we be posting links to conversations on Mastodon instead? Or are we still somewhat addicted to Elon Musk's influence?
    - madeofpalk 3y ago
      It actually kind of has the opposite effect. Turns out the people that want to pay to have their opinions heard probably don't have great things to say, so it creates an easy demarcation in the replies. You can just ignore all the posts at the top with a blue check, and then go down to the higher quality organic posts at the bottom.
      - hutzlibu 3y ago
        Thanks for the advice, but I think I will just continue to ignore Twitter. Important things will still probably reach me in embedded shape or quote on other sites, but currently I cannot remember a single tweet at all, that not reading it, would have changed my life for the worse. So no doubt good content is hidden underneath, but all this drama makes it not worth it for me.
      - CiaranMcNulty 3y ago
        Blocking blue ticks also works well for this
        bleep_bloop 3y ago
        Actually Elon gifted thousands of blue ticks to any accounts that had over 1M followers and other notable accounts in order to obfuscate who paid for their tick and who did not.
        concordDance 3y ago
        Thousands? Thought it was hust three. Where did you find that out?
      - 3y ago
- jahnu 3y ago
  Out of all the questionable changes made it’s by far the worst. It has uniquely changed the tone of Twitter from a place where the discussion would be in some way shaped by the followers of the OP. I.e. You had some idea whether or not the replies would be interesting to you based on who was being replied to or maybe how controversial or informative the post was. It was complex but interesting dynamic. Now… it’s just a predictable hoard of of internet howler monkeys below any post that isn’t just some quiet odd corner of Twitter. It’s what is reducing my engagement and anecdotally that of anyone I know too. Even friends who decided to pay are tired of being “lumped in” with these people.
  - anonymousiam 3y ago
    So who gets the megaphone, those who support the platform, or the ideological moderators behind the scenes?
    - bandyaboot 3y ago
      It’s being passed around amongst the crypto spammers and each of the 10,000 or so “people” vying for the title of hottest 18 year old on OnlyFans.
    - jahnu 3y ago
      I’m just saying it was better before, not perfect before.
- bjackman 3y ago
  It's so obvious when you use Twitter as to not really need confirmation. It's not like a fuzzy statistical boost, it's literally just all Blue replies come above all non-Blue replies. The only exception is that a non-Blue reply can sometimes get boosted in order to be able to show a blue 2nd-level reply. If you scroll through replies you'll often find a bunch of zero-like replies like "lol" and "me too" from Blue users, then below that a handful of insightful replies with dozens of likes, from non-Blue users. You can see why the latter are not gonna keep posting those replies much longer.
concordDance 3y ago
The bigger reason this reply thread will be dominated by elon musk fans is that its about elon musk and elon musk fans vs elon musk haters is the divide that gets you the biggest blue vs non-blue ratio.
ta1243 3y ago
> So Wales being under attack on Twitter is sad but doesn't necessarily represent "public opinion". Even before Musk took over twitter was a very specific, very tiny, slice of the English speaking world. There was a film theory a few months ago which looked at movies and trending on twitter, and dug a little deeper. Twitter for exmaple completely ignored major cultural phenomenon like Yellowstone, but really bigged up stuff the vast majority of the world doesn't care about ("the Snyder cut") Presumably this applies to pretty much any subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRa...
- bjackman 3y ago
  Yeah that's definitely also true, it just became a different and (to my tastes) more objectionable slice!
Mizoguchi 3y ago
Right, we are now in the days of public figures like Jimmy Wales promoting Erdogan's courts and judges as a respectable arena for freedom of speech justice.

hutzlibu 3y ago

"because people who pay for Twitter have their replies shown first" I don't really go to Twitter, so I don't know, but am curious: Is this an established fact? A quick search did not show anything official confirming this.

concordDance 3y ago
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue > Prioritized rankings in conversations and search: Tweets that you interact with will receive a small boost in their ranking. Additionally, your replies will receive a boost that ranks them closer to the top. Twitter Blue subscribers will appear in the Verified tab within other users’ notifications tab which highlights replies, mentions, and engagement from Blue subscribers. The rationale was that paying $8/month is the best way to filter out bots, but...
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  Oh, so it officially is "pay to win" now. Nice. Free speech to everyone, but if you actually want to be heard, you have to pay up. At least it is somewhat honest and not, oh, we didn't meant to do this, in our effort to convince more people into paying.
  - mcv 3y ago
    So why do we still post Twitter conversations here? Shouldn't we be posting links to conversations on Mastodon instead? Or are we still somewhat addicted to Elon Musk's influence?
  - madeofpalk 3y ago
    It actually kind of has the opposite effect. Turns out the people that want to pay to have their opinions heard probably don't have great things to say, so it creates an easy demarcation in the replies. You can just ignore all the posts at the top with a blue check, and then go down to the higher quality organic posts at the bottom.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      Thanks for the advice, but I think I will just continue to ignore Twitter. Important things will still probably reach me in embedded shape or quote on other sites, but currently I cannot remember a single tweet at all, that not reading it, would have changed my life for the worse. So no doubt good content is hidden underneath, but all this drama makes it not worth it for me.
    - CiaranMcNulty 3y ago
      Blocking blue ticks also works well for this
      - bleep_bloop 3y ago
        Actually Elon gifted thousands of blue ticks to any accounts that had over 1M followers and other notable accounts in order to obfuscate who paid for their tick and who did not.
        concordDance 3y ago
        Thousands? Thought it was hust three. Where did you find that out?
    - 3y ago
jahnu 3y ago
Out of all the questionable changes made it’s by far the worst. It has uniquely changed the tone of Twitter from a place where the discussion would be in some way shaped by the followers of the OP. I.e. You had some idea whether or not the replies would be interesting to you based on who was being replied to or maybe how controversial or informative the post was. It was complex but interesting dynamic. Now… it’s just a predictable hoard of of internet howler monkeys below any post that isn’t just some quiet odd corner of Twitter. It’s what is reducing my engagement and anecdotally that of anyone I know too. Even friends who decided to pay are tired of being “lumped in” with these people.
- anonymousiam 3y ago
  So who gets the megaphone, those who support the platform, or the ideological moderators behind the scenes?
  - bandyaboot 3y ago
    It’s being passed around amongst the crypto spammers and each of the 10,000 or so “people” vying for the title of hottest 18 year old on OnlyFans.
  - jahnu 3y ago
    I’m just saying it was better before, not perfect before.
bjackman 3y ago
It's so obvious when you use Twitter as to not really need confirmation. It's not like a fuzzy statistical boost, it's literally just all Blue replies come above all non-Blue replies. The only exception is that a non-Blue reply can sometimes get boosted in order to be able to show a blue 2nd-level reply. If you scroll through replies you'll often find a bunch of zero-like replies like "lol" and "me too" from Blue users, then below that a handful of insightful replies with dozens of likes, from non-Blue users. You can see why the latter are not gonna keep posting those replies much longer.

concordDance 3y ago

The bigger reason this reply thread will be dominated by elon musk fans is that its about elon musk and elon musk fans vs elon musk haters is the divide that gets you the biggest blue vs non-blue ratio.

ta1243 3y ago

> So Wales being under attack on Twitter is sad but doesn't necessarily represent "public opinion". Even before Musk took over twitter was a very specific, very tiny, slice of the English speaking world. There was a film theory a few months ago which looked at movies and trending on twitter, and dug a little deeper. Twitter for exmaple completely ignored major cultural phenomenon like Yellowstone, but really bigged up stuff the vast majority of the world doesn't care about ("the Snyder cut") Presumably this applies to pretty much any subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRa...

bjackman 3y ago
Yeah that's definitely also true, it just became a different and (to my tastes) more objectionable slice!

Mizoguchi 3y ago

Right, we are now in the days of public figures like Jimmy Wales promoting Erdogan's courts and judges as a respectable arena for freedom of speech justice.