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Lost a significant chunk of my attention with the thesis, then all of it in a thicket of tendacious musings. > "Twitter will persist in a deteriorated state,

Lost a significant chunk of my attention with the thesis, then all of it in a thicket of tendacious musings. > "Twitter will persist in a deteriorated state, perhaps indefinitely." Makes sense. > "However, it's already a pale shadow of what it was at its peak. The cool kids are no longer sitting over in bottle service knocking out banger tweets." Fun visually evocative analogy, but gossamer. As soon as we try applying it to reality, it falls apart. > "Instead, the timeline is filled with more and more strangers the bouncer let in to shill their tweetstorms, many of them Twitter Verified accounts who paid the grand fee of $8 a month for the privilege." What's "the timeline" here? For You? Following? This hides the ball on the fact there's a much simpler concept here that we're already familiar with, algorithmic vs. "true" timeline. In fact, Twitter pre-Musk had this. It's just different bluechecks now. > "In the past year, so many random meetings I have with one-time Twitter junkies begin with a long sigh and then a question that is more lamentation than anything else: “How did Twitter get so bad?”" From above: the cool kids aren't in bottle service banging (whatever that means) and they're stuck on the algorithmic timeline.

PaulHoule 3y ago
The article was too long but I thought had some interesting ideas. Lately though I think the key to understanding Twitter is the relationship with the media and particularly “media amplification” For instance there was that case where somebody bought a blue check for a fake Eli Lilly account, tweeted “insulin is now free”, allegedly caused the stock to drop, and the media erupts in outrage. Suddenly it is a big problem you can get a bogus blue check but, really, there is very little top stop me from buying some name like “elilil.ly”, copying their template, and making a fake page with all the fake information I want. It would take their lawyers days if not weeks to get a preliminary injunction in a case like that, but truth is a site like that might go undiscovered for years. There is isn’t a lot of talk about about the danger of website impersonation although there must be millions or billions scammed out of people yearly by fake web sites. Similarly there was the incident of J.K. Rowling getting dogpiled on Twitter that was only remarkable because (1) she was famous and (2) the story got picked up in the media. All kinds of people get dogpiled every day (often for being gender-nonconforming) and (as awful as it is) it’s usually a free in the forest that falls without making a sound. In both of these cases only a few very people experienced them on Twitter and the situation quickly blew over. The stories get told over and over and over again away from Twitter, people may still be reading about them 20 years from now but it won’t be on Twitter. Cases like this happen on all kinds of social media but Twitter’s got a special attraction to people in the media that makes it all the more so.
jeremyjh 3y ago
> It's just different bluechecks now. No, the bluechecks now are simply much worse. Previously, status was a selector, which takes into account the preferences of many, many people. Now, the primary selector is being an Elmo stan with $8. I've little interest in hearing from these people.
- nancyhn 3y ago
  Some prefer The Annointed (before), others prefer The People (now).
  - timmytokyo 3y ago
    Musk stans are not "The People".
    - flangola7 3y ago
      [flagged]
rsynnott 3y ago
It's very clear from the piece that what he means by the timeline is the (old) algorithmic timeline. Though, note that, even if you use Twitter purely on the linear timeline, you are still exposed to the algorithmic timeline, because, well, where did you think the people you follow were seeing the stuff that they retweet? Even without this effect, it would have changed; a lot of people are _no longer using it_. My linear timeline is dramatically different to how it was a year ago, because so many people have just stopped tweeting (though, actually, now that I look at it, I had to scroll back about a hundred items on my linear timeline to find something that wasn't a retweet; presumably something is once again broken.) > In fact, Twitter pre-Musk had this. It's just different bluechecks now. As far as anyone knows, old-Twitter did not prioritise bluetick tweets (at least not directly, though the selection criteria for bluetickdom did mostly select for people who were getting a lot of visibility for other reasons); it certainly did not promote them to the top of the replies. Naughty Ol' Mr Car framed this as a new thing that he was doing (and the sea of irrelevant bluetick responses on anything popular is certainly a new phenomenon).

PaulHoule 3y ago

The article was too long but I thought had some interesting ideas. Lately though I think the key to understanding Twitter is the relationship with the media and particularly “media amplification” For instance there was that case where somebody bought a blue check for a fake Eli Lilly account, tweeted “insulin is now free”, allegedly caused the stock to drop, and the media erupts in outrage. Suddenly it is a big problem you can get a bogus blue check but, really, there is very little top stop me from buying some name like “elilil.ly”, copying their template, and making a fake page with all the fake information I want. It would take their lawyers days if not weeks to get a preliminary injunction in a case like that, but truth is a site like that might go undiscovered for years. There is isn’t a lot of talk about about the danger of website impersonation although there must be millions or billions scammed out of people yearly by fake web sites. Similarly there was the incident of J.K. Rowling getting dogpiled on Twitter that was only remarkable because (1) she was famous and (2) the story got picked up in the media. All kinds of people get dogpiled every day (often for being gender-nonconforming) and (as awful as it is) it’s usually a free in the forest that falls without making a sound. In both of these cases only a few very people experienced them on Twitter and the situation quickly blew over. The stories get told over and over and over again away from Twitter, people may still be reading about them 20 years from now but it won’t be on Twitter. Cases like this happen on all kinds of social media but Twitter’s got a special attraction to people in the media that makes it all the more so.

jeremyjh 3y ago

> It's just different bluechecks now. No, the bluechecks now are simply much worse. Previously, status was a selector, which takes into account the preferences of many, many people. Now, the primary selector is being an Elmo stan with $8. I've little interest in hearing from these people.

nancyhn 3y ago
Some prefer The Annointed (before), others prefer The People (now).
- timmytokyo 3y ago
  Musk stans are not "The People".
  - flangola7 3y ago
    [flagged]

rsynnott 3y ago

It's very clear from the piece that what he means by the timeline is the (old) algorithmic timeline. Though, note that, even if you use Twitter purely on the linear timeline, you are still exposed to the algorithmic timeline, because, well, where did you think the people you follow were seeing the stuff that they retweet? Even without this effect, it would have changed; a lot of people are _no longer using it_. My linear timeline is dramatically different to how it was a year ago, because so many people have just stopped tweeting (though, actually, now that I look at it, I had to scroll back about a hundred items on my linear timeline to find something that wasn't a retweet; presumably something is once again broken.) > In fact, Twitter pre-Musk had this. It's just different bluechecks now. As far as anyone knows, old-Twitter did not prioritise bluetick tweets (at least not directly, though the selection criteria for bluetickdom did mostly select for people who were getting a lot of visibility for other reasons); it certainly did not promote them to the top of the replies. Naughty Ol' Mr Car framed this as a new thing that he was doing (and the sea of irrelevant bluetick responses on anything popular is certainly a new phenomenon).