5 ms·

How is Twitter rapidly decaying? I am a daily, but very light user so I may not be observing the trends as well as you.

by tomcam 3y ago

wpietri 3y ago
Traffic is down modestly, revenue is down dramatically, outages are up, bugs are up, abuse is up, many users have departed, and the value of the company has fallen by something between half and two thirds. One of its core assets, the blue checkmark for verified notable accounts, has been permanently destroyed. I no longer use it, but word from my friends who still do is that is has become grimmer, less fun. Musk has stopped releasing statistics, but I expect that new users signups and net promoter scores are well down as well. Musk keeps picking fights with vendors; the latest feud with Google means they may soon lose significant trust and safety tooling. Twitter keeps losing staff, Ella Irwin being the latest, and word is that they're running skeleton crews for core functionality, with a lot of the current staff being people who are trapped in the jobs by visas and the like. That suggests we'll be seeing more messes like the failure of DeSantis's campaign launch. And that's all off the top of my head. If you want to read more, I'd suggest Casey Newton's articles on it; he's been covering it pretty well.
- behnamoh 3y ago
  I don't notice any of the things you mentioned. As a user, I haven't felt much difference before and after Musk's takeover. If anything, I think Twitter is a little bit better and more vibrant now, because the censorship is not like before. Yes, lot's of people tried Mastodon as an alternative, but I still see almost all my followees on Twitter.
  - tomrod 3y ago
    Your comments reminds me of the metaphor of boiling a frog. Twitters users, the advertisers, have noticed. Thus the revenue decrease. Twitter's product, sets of eyeballs, are still around (despite being compositionally a different population, mostly).
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - larksimian 3y ago
      You follow some weird accounts if that's what you see in your feed.
    - the_doctah 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - wpietri 3y ago
    Oh? What are some examples of the "censorship is not like before" that you think have improved things?
    - the_doctah 3y ago
      People aren't getting banned for telling "journalists" to learn to code.
      - wpietri 3y ago
        People were getting banned for harassing individual laid-off journalists. A tweet expressing a view about good jobs for journalists changing industries was not ever a problem, so it wasn't a free-speech concern. Being a dick to people is not a legal right.
        behnamoh 3y ago
        > Being a dick to people is not a legal right. It's not illegal either.
        wpietri 3y ago
        Depending on how one does it, that's true. But that's also not relevant here. Twitter as a private entity does not have to just say, "Welp, it's legal" to anything that happens on their site.
        behnamoh 3y ago
        They “don’t have to” say it but they legally can.
        stale2002 3y ago
        Originally you asked "that you think have improved things". And then someone gave a valid response. And then you responded to this response by saying "Twitter as a private entity does not have to just say, "Welp, it's legal" to anything that happens on their site." This response is a non sequitur. Nobody in this thread said that twitter is forced to do anything. Instead, the original claim is that this was an improvement. And yes, twitter is allowed to make this change where they censor less things.
  - farhanhubble 3y ago
    Twitter used to be my key source of technology research and almost all the folks I used to see in my timeline are either dormant or gone now. On top of that I see two tabs with mostly irrelevant stuff from someone far far afar in the network. Earlier I used to see irrelevant ads. Now I see suspicious ones, like one promising an AI girlfriend and another one promoting some dubious bitcoin token and random people promoting themselves.
- Lapsa 3y ago
  [flagged]
- nomdep 3y ago
  > I'd suggest Casey Newton's articles on it That explains why the rest of your comment doesn’t make sense to me. IMHO Casey Newton is a vulture journalist. He specializes in exaggerate and twist every minor problem he can find in tech companies.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    So what isn’t true of the listed problems? One might argue that some of those are not big problems, but advertisers pulling out is an absolutely major problem.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    The bulk of what I said can be verified from other sources, so if you don't like Casey Newton, feel free to look for other stuff. But I am one of Twitter's first 500 users and am a former Twitter employee who keeps an eye on Twitter. And I think Newton's doing a much better job of reporting on Twitter than most places.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Is there really any serious argument about Twitter revenue being down and major ad buyers leaving?
- the_doctah 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - wpietri 3y ago
    I did not get fired by Elon, so that's a swing and a miss. Any other straw men you wanted to try? You're wrong about the "average user" enjoying "free speech", of course. That's the view Twitter started out on, "the free speech wing of the free speech party". But they learned that certain kinds of speech drove away users and made it hard to sell ads, so for very good business reasons, they decided to take away the "free speech" of people to, say, shout the n-word at black people. [1] I believe you enjoy it more, of course. But other people enjoy it less. You and Musk are making the same mistake in thinking a thing that you like is a thing that everybody will like. Running a social network means you have to create something that is liked by a very wide variety of people. And a lot of people who wave the "free speech" banner just turn out to want no constraints on their own speech, while having much less concern about creating a place where a wide variety of people can safely speak up and be heard. [1] Something that surged under Musk's new "free speech" regime. e.g., https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/tech/twitter-hate-speech/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/tech/twitter-hate-speech/inde...
    - the_doctah 3y ago
      [flagged]
- specialist 3y ago
  Hopefully Musk will buy NewsCorp or Sinclair next.
- adamc 3y ago
  Blue checkmarks are now widely mocked.
machdiamonds 3y ago
As a user, I think Twitter is better now, notably with the Community Notes feature that even Zuckerberg commended on Lex's podcast - I hope he introduces a similar concept. The option to post extended threads is appreciated. I hardly come across political content as I avoid engagement with it, and I find it beneficial that creating an account is no longer necessary for viewing Tweets and responses.
- nebula8804 3y ago
  If I understand correctly this was a feature already nearly completed as Twitter was being acquired and Elon just rolled it out and took credit.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    That's correct. It was launched as "Birdwatch" long before Musk arrived: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-birdwatch-a-community-based-approach-to-misinformation https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introduci...
- splistud 3y ago
  [dead]
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > I find it beneficial that creating an account is no longer necessary for viewing Tweets and responses. I don't recall it being truly necessary before, though there were annoying banners sometimes. But right now "age restricted" tweets require a login, and the thing that makes tweets age restricted is the presence of images plus a very buggy per-account setting.
asveikau 3y ago
I don't know if this is true, but I heard that recently, searching Twitter for "cats" led you to videos of cats being mutilated. The story continued that Elon had fired the entire team devoted to preventing such outcomes. https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-removes-autocomplete-after-videos-animal-abuse-mass-shootings-2023-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-removes-autocomplete... Somehow hearing this story made me picture my daughter, 10, searching for cat videos.
- _djo_ 3y ago
  Yes, it’s accurate. I tested it at the time and was shown that video. It was later fixed for ‘cats’, but it took a while. There have been other examples beyond that cat video too, that just got a lot of attention.
  - benburleson 3y ago
    This shows how much I don’t use Twitter, but I was curious to verify this and learned I need to sign in (or in my case create an account) to search…is that true?
    - wpietri 3y ago
      I believe it is now. Search used to work without being signed in, but I'm pretty sure that changed at some point in the post-Elon era.
  - tomcam 3y ago
    Couldn’t verify? https://twitter.com/search?q=%20Cats&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=%20Cats&src=typed_query
    - hoppyhoppy2 3y ago
      from the parent comment: > It was later fixed for ‘cats’, but it took a while.
two_handfuls 3y ago
The company lost half of its value in six months, according to Elon Musk himself [1]. Anecdotally, due to Musk's support of extreme-right views (for example re-inviting Trump [2], supporting DeSantis [3], or protecting bullying [4]), many people have left in protest and so these views are over-represented on the site. The word "decay" seems appropriate. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/elon-musk-twitter-value.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/elon-musk-twit... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/19/business/twitter-musk-trump-reinstate/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/19/business/twitter-musk-trump-r... [3] https://slate.com/technology/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-twitter-launch-president-trump-biden.html https://slate.com/technology/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-... [4] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musks-new-twitter-pronoun-rule-invites-bullying-lgbtq-groups-say-rcna87336 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musks-new-twitte...
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  [flagged]
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> How is Twitter rapidly decaying As a business, it's obviously fucked. Revenues are down, regulators are circling and it's difficult to see them recovering when Musk has made a habit of publicly pillorying his customers. Granted, it was the last boom's RJR-Nabisco/Harrah's Entertainment top-tick LBO, so it started the race ass first. But it's difficult to see Twitter avoiding restructuring, a necessarily distracting and value-debilitating process. (On even a generous revenue multiple, its equity value is zero.) Musk's only face-saving exit is to fold when a foreign regulator fines him.

How is Twitter rapidly decaying? I am a daily, but very light user so I may not be observing the trends as well as you.

by tomcam 3y ago

How is Twitter rapidly decaying? I am a daily, but very light user so I may not be observing the trends as well as you.

Traffic is down modestly, revenue is down dramatically, outages are up, bugs are up, abuse is up, many users have departed, and the value of the company has fallen by something between half and two thirds. One of its core assets, the blue checkmark for verified notable accounts, has been permanently destroyed. I no longer use it, but word from my friends who still do is that is has become grimmer, less fun. Musk has stopped releasing statistics, but I expect that new users signups and net promoter scores are well down as well. Musk keeps picking fights with vendors; the latest feud with Google means they may soon lose significant trust and safety tooling. Twitter keeps losing staff, Ella Irwin being the latest, and word is that they're running skeleton crews for core functionality, with a lot of the current staff being people who are trapped in the jobs by visas and the like. That suggests we'll be seeing more messes like the failure of DeSantis's campaign launch. And that's all off the top of my head. If you want to read more, I'd suggest Casey Newton's articles on it; he's been covering it pretty well.

behnamoh 3y ago
I don't notice any of the things you mentioned. As a user, I haven't felt much difference before and after Musk's takeover. If anything, I think Twitter is a little bit better and more vibrant now, because the censorship is not like before. Yes, lot's of people tried Mastodon as an alternative, but I still see almost all my followees on Twitter.
- tomrod 3y ago
  Your comments reminds me of the metaphor of boiling a frog. Twitters users, the advertisers, have noticed. Thus the revenue decrease. Twitter's product, sets of eyeballs, are still around (despite being compositionally a different population, mostly).
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - larksimian 3y ago
    You follow some weird accounts if that's what you see in your feed.
  - the_doctah 3y ago
    [flagged]
- wpietri 3y ago
  Oh? What are some examples of the "censorship is not like before" that you think have improved things?
  - the_doctah 3y ago
    People aren't getting banned for telling "journalists" to learn to code.
    - wpietri 3y ago
      People were getting banned for harassing individual laid-off journalists. A tweet expressing a view about good jobs for journalists changing industries was not ever a problem, so it wasn't a free-speech concern. Being a dick to people is not a legal right.
      - behnamoh 3y ago
        > Being a dick to people is not a legal right. It's not illegal either.
        wpietri 3y ago
        Depending on how one does it, that's true. But that's also not relevant here. Twitter as a private entity does not have to just say, "Welp, it's legal" to anything that happens on their site.
        behnamoh 3y ago
        They “don’t have to” say it but they legally can.
        stale2002 3y ago
        Originally you asked "that you think have improved things". And then someone gave a valid response. And then you responded to this response by saying "Twitter as a private entity does not have to just say, "Welp, it's legal" to anything that happens on their site." This response is a non sequitur. Nobody in this thread said that twitter is forced to do anything. Instead, the original claim is that this was an improvement. And yes, twitter is allowed to make this change where they censor less things.
- farhanhubble 3y ago
  Twitter used to be my key source of technology research and almost all the folks I used to see in my timeline are either dormant or gone now. On top of that I see two tabs with mostly irrelevant stuff from someone far far afar in the network. Earlier I used to see irrelevant ads. Now I see suspicious ones, like one promising an AI girlfriend and another one promoting some dubious bitcoin token and random people promoting themselves.
Lapsa 3y ago
[flagged]
nomdep 3y ago
> I'd suggest Casey Newton's articles on it That explains why the rest of your comment doesn’t make sense to me. IMHO Casey Newton is a vulture journalist. He specializes in exaggerate and twist every minor problem he can find in tech companies.
- kaba0 3y ago
  So what isn’t true of the listed problems? One might argue that some of those are not big problems, but advertisers pulling out is an absolutely major problem.
- wpietri 3y ago
  The bulk of what I said can be verified from other sources, so if you don't like Casey Newton, feel free to look for other stuff. But I am one of Twitter's first 500 users and am a former Twitter employee who keeps an eye on Twitter. And I think Newton's doing a much better job of reporting on Twitter than most places.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Is there really any serious argument about Twitter revenue being down and major ad buyers leaving?
the_doctah 3y ago
[flagged]
- wpietri 3y ago
  I did not get fired by Elon, so that's a swing and a miss. Any other straw men you wanted to try? You're wrong about the "average user" enjoying "free speech", of course. That's the view Twitter started out on, "the free speech wing of the free speech party". But they learned that certain kinds of speech drove away users and made it hard to sell ads, so for very good business reasons, they decided to take away the "free speech" of people to, say, shout the n-word at black people. [1] I believe you enjoy it more, of course. But other people enjoy it less. You and Musk are making the same mistake in thinking a thing that you like is a thing that everybody will like. Running a social network means you have to create something that is liked by a very wide variety of people. And a lot of people who wave the "free speech" banner just turn out to want no constraints on their own speech, while having much less concern about creating a place where a wide variety of people can safely speak up and be heard. [1] Something that surged under Musk's new "free speech" regime. e.g., https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/tech/twitter-hate-speech/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/tech/twitter-hate-speech/inde...
  - the_doctah 3y ago
    [flagged]
specialist 3y ago
Hopefully Musk will buy NewsCorp or Sinclair next.
adamc 3y ago
Blue checkmarks are now widely mocked.

machdiamonds 3y ago

As a user, I think Twitter is better now, notably with the Community Notes feature that even Zuckerberg commended on Lex's podcast - I hope he introduces a similar concept. The option to post extended threads is appreciated. I hardly come across political content as I avoid engagement with it, and I find it beneficial that creating an account is no longer necessary for viewing Tweets and responses.

nebula8804 3y ago
If I understand correctly this was a feature already nearly completed as Twitter was being acquired and Elon just rolled it out and took credit.
- wpietri 3y ago
  That's correct. It was launched as "Birdwatch" long before Musk arrived: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-birdwatch-a-community-based-approach-to-misinformation https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introduci...
splistud 3y ago
[dead]
Dylan16807 3y ago
> I find it beneficial that creating an account is no longer necessary for viewing Tweets and responses. I don't recall it being truly necessary before, though there were annoying banners sometimes. But right now "age restricted" tweets require a login, and the thing that makes tweets age restricted is the presence of images plus a very buggy per-account setting.

asveikau 3y ago

I don't know if this is true, but I heard that recently, searching Twitter for "cats" led you to videos of cats being mutilated. The story continued that Elon had fired the entire team devoted to preventing such outcomes. https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-removes-autocomplete-after-videos-animal-abuse-mass-shootings-2023-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-removes-autocomplete... Somehow hearing this story made me picture my daughter, 10, searching for cat videos.

_djo_ 3y ago
Yes, it’s accurate. I tested it at the time and was shown that video. It was later fixed for ‘cats’, but it took a while. There have been other examples beyond that cat video too, that just got a lot of attention.
- benburleson 3y ago
  This shows how much I don’t use Twitter, but I was curious to verify this and learned I need to sign in (or in my case create an account) to search…is that true?
  - wpietri 3y ago
    I believe it is now. Search used to work without being signed in, but I'm pretty sure that changed at some point in the post-Elon era.
- tomcam 3y ago
  Couldn’t verify? https://twitter.com/search?q=%20Cats&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=%20Cats&src=typed_query
  - hoppyhoppy2 3y ago
    from the parent comment: > It was later fixed for ‘cats’, but it took a while.

two_handfuls 3y ago

The company lost half of its value in six months, according to Elon Musk himself [1]. Anecdotally, due to Musk's support of extreme-right views (for example re-inviting Trump [2], supporting DeSantis [3], or protecting bullying [4]), many people have left in protest and so these views are over-represented on the site. The word "decay" seems appropriate. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/elon-musk-twitter-value.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/elon-musk-twit... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/19/business/twitter-musk-trump-reinstate/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/19/business/twitter-musk-trump-r... [3] https://slate.com/technology/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-twitter-launch-president-trump-biden.html https://slate.com/technology/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-... [4] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musks-new-twitter-pronoun-rule-invites-bullying-lgbtq-groups-say-rcna87336 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musks-new-twitte...

jiggawatts 3y ago
[flagged]

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> How is Twitter rapidly decaying As a business, it's obviously fucked. Revenues are down, regulators are circling and it's difficult to see them recovering when Musk has made a habit of publicly pillorying his customers. Granted, it was the last boom's RJR-Nabisco/Harrah's Entertainment top-tick LBO, so it started the race ass first. But it's difficult to see Twitter avoiding restructuring, a necessarily distracting and value-debilitating process. (On even a generous revenue multiple, its equity value is zero.) Musk's only face-saving exit is to fold when a foreign regulator fines him.