4 ms·

At this point it has gotten bad enough that I won't even view twitter links. It is ethically corrupt to give them views/money, and dangerous. Threads is a rea

At this point it has gotten bad enough that I won't even view twitter links. It is ethically corrupt to give them views/money, and dangerous. Threads is a reasonable replacement if you need the fix.

londons_explore 3y ago
Threads is a ghosttown round here. Far more activity on twitter still.
- LexiMax 3y ago
  For now. It's a two-site race to see if Threads will add a web-facing front-end before BlueSky can come out of private beta.
LexiMax 3y ago
I use the Nitter Redirect extension to redirect Twitter links to a Nitter proxy site, though I do it for more practical reasons - mirrors tend to be more reliable and faster to load than Twitter itself these days. - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nitter-redirect/mohaicophfnifehkkkdbcejkflmgfkof https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nitter-redirect/mo... - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redire...
- burkaman 3y ago
  Nitter just broke yesterday and it seems unlikely it can be fixed: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/983 https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/983
  - LexiMax 3y ago
    It still seems to work intermittently. I'd chalk this up less to targeted malice and more up to the general problems Twitter has been having in the past few days. I don't think it's an accident that this is happening at the same time that there is a "news site throttling" going on. I bet it's just yet another failing system at Twitter HQ.
    - burkaman 3y ago
      I think it might still work for redirecting individual tweets, but viewing a profile seems permanently broken based on recent Twitter design changes pushing people to log in.
v4dok 3y ago
[flagged]
josefresco 3y ago
I've tried all the new networks, and I get the most engagement on the smallest: T2 Social - There's only 14K users but I routinely get more views, replies, & likes than Twitter/X where I have over 8x the followers.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  Remember that week when people were jumping up and down to give Zuckerberg more power? That was a good one. How is Threads doing anyhow?
indymike 3y ago
> ethically corrupt to give them views/money I think it's just become a bad experience. Twitter / X has really just become no fun. I have enough stress in my life without adding the stuff Twitter's algorithm thinks I'm interested in.
electrondood 3y ago
Ditto. Throwing away all of your brand capital by changing the name to a letter, and blocking anyone from viewing content unless they create an account, were both pretty boneheaded moves. I have to imagine that traffic plummeted after the latter.
smsm42 3y ago
I've left Twitter years ago. But I occasionally follow Twitter links and sometimes even refer to them, when there's no other choice. There's nothing "dangerous" in that and exactly nothing changed recently. And I must note in general that using "dangerous" (or "unsafe") to mean "has a non-zero risk of mildly annoying me" is extremely pretentious and obnoxious. The login requirement has been slightly annoying (note - not "dangerous") but only marginally as it still allows to view the main tweet, and the discussion under it is usually very low-value (also nothing new in it, has been like that for years). I feel like all this "twitter is a hellscape now" is posing trying to get back at Musk because his idea about who should be allowed on twitter doesn't match theirs. And mainly for politically tribal and partisan reasons, to be blunt. Also I note I have never followed or sent a link to Threads so far - not because I am somehow opposed to that, just there was no opportunity to do that since nothing that could interest me and is published there got into my attention so far. There's little reason to prefer one to the other, but effectively my experience shows twitter links sometimes contain useful information - I follow several every week - and I haven't seen any Threads links yet that did. Maybe in time that'll happen too.
- LexiMax 3y ago
  > I feel like all this "twitter is a hellscape now" is posing trying to get back at Musk because his idea about who should be allowed on twitter doesn't match theirs. And mainly for politically tribal and partisan reasons, to be blunt. I'm sure this is true of some people, but the habitual Twitter users I know have basically given up on the site as a shared social space because of changes to the feed algorithm and the blue check system making the sort of social engagement they used to regularly enjoy on the site almost impossible.
  - smsm42 3y ago
    Well, blue check thing is part of the tribal reasons - "the plebes can have the blue checks now, the place is going to hell!". As for the feed algos, there may be some truth to that, I personally have no idea since I never looked at the "feed" - I only ever engaged twitter by using direct links or reading the twitstream of specific people I was interested in. But I could imagine algorithm changes could ruin somebody's carefully constructed bubble and that could be upsetting. The reasons given in the article though have a strong political bent.

At this point it has gotten bad enough that I won't even view twitter links. It is ethically corrupt to give them views/money, and dangerous. Threads is a reasonable replacement if you need the fix.

londons_explore 3y ago

Threads is a ghosttown round here. Far more activity on twitter still.

LexiMax 3y ago
For now. It's a two-site race to see if Threads will add a web-facing front-end before BlueSky can come out of private beta.

LexiMax 3y ago

I use the Nitter Redirect extension to redirect Twitter links to a Nitter proxy site, though I do it for more practical reasons - mirrors tend to be more reliable and faster to load than Twitter itself these days. - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nitter-redirect/mohaicophfnifehkkkdbcejkflmgfkof https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nitter-redirect/mo... - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redire...

burkaman 3y ago
Nitter just broke yesterday and it seems unlikely it can be fixed: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/983 https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/983
- LexiMax 3y ago
  It still seems to work intermittently. I'd chalk this up less to targeted malice and more up to the general problems Twitter has been having in the past few days. I don't think it's an accident that this is happening at the same time that there is a "news site throttling" going on. I bet it's just yet another failing system at Twitter HQ.
  - burkaman 3y ago
    I think it might still work for redirecting individual tweets, but viewing a profile seems permanently broken based on recent Twitter design changes pushing people to log in.

v4dok 3y ago

[flagged]

josefresco 3y ago

I've tried all the new networks, and I get the most engagement on the smallest: T2 Social - There's only 14K users but I routinely get more views, replies, & likes than Twitter/X where I have over 8x the followers.

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
Remember that week when people were jumping up and down to give Zuckerberg more power? That was a good one. How is Threads doing anyhow?

indymike 3y ago

> ethically corrupt to give them views/money I think it's just become a bad experience. Twitter / X has really just become no fun. I have enough stress in my life without adding the stuff Twitter's algorithm thinks I'm interested in.

electrondood 3y ago

Ditto. Throwing away all of your brand capital by changing the name to a letter, and blocking anyone from viewing content unless they create an account, were both pretty boneheaded moves. I have to imagine that traffic plummeted after the latter.

smsm42 3y ago

I've left Twitter years ago. But I occasionally follow Twitter links and sometimes even refer to them, when there's no other choice. There's nothing "dangerous" in that and exactly nothing changed recently. And I must note in general that using "dangerous" (or "unsafe") to mean "has a non-zero risk of mildly annoying me" is extremely pretentious and obnoxious. The login requirement has been slightly annoying (note - not "dangerous") but only marginally as it still allows to view the main tweet, and the discussion under it is usually very low-value (also nothing new in it, has been like that for years). I feel like all this "twitter is a hellscape now" is posing trying to get back at Musk because his idea about who should be allowed on twitter doesn't match theirs. And mainly for politically tribal and partisan reasons, to be blunt. Also I note I have never followed or sent a link to Threads so far - not because I am somehow opposed to that, just there was no opportunity to do that since nothing that could interest me and is published there got into my attention so far. There's little reason to prefer one to the other, but effectively my experience shows twitter links sometimes contain useful information - I follow several every week - and I haven't seen any Threads links yet that did. Maybe in time that'll happen too.

LexiMax 3y ago
> I feel like all this "twitter is a hellscape now" is posing trying to get back at Musk because his idea about who should be allowed on twitter doesn't match theirs. And mainly for politically tribal and partisan reasons, to be blunt. I'm sure this is true of some people, but the habitual Twitter users I know have basically given up on the site as a shared social space because of changes to the feed algorithm and the blue check system making the sort of social engagement they used to regularly enjoy on the site almost impossible.
- smsm42 3y ago
  Well, blue check thing is part of the tribal reasons - "the plebes can have the blue checks now, the place is going to hell!". As for the feed algos, there may be some truth to that, I personally have no idea since I never looked at the "feed" - I only ever engaged twitter by using direct links or reading the twitstream of specific people I was interested in. But I could imagine algorithm changes could ruin somebody's carefully constructed bubble and that could be upsetting. The reasons given in the article though have a strong political bent.