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> There was a window where this wasn’t assured You're living in a fantasy bubble if you think anything in this comment is insightful or representative of the c

> There was a window where this wasn’t assured You're living in a fantasy bubble if you think anything in this comment is insightful or representative of the current state of Twitter. The only thing that was in doubt during the various recent Twitter changes was how rapidly it would decline - people have underestimated network inertia, which is why Mastodon and now Bsky have failed to capture sufficient impressions to convince everyone they're the "next Twitter". Which ultimately brings people back to Twitter - noone is going to Twitter because Mastodon/Bsky don't work, they're coming back because with each migration they overestimate the finality & are disappointed. Ultimately though, slow as Twitter's decline is, it is continuing to decline steadily & will inevitably cross the critical threshold where one can consider it first irrelevant (Facebook's currenly approaching this state, a process which has been slow), then eventually "defunct". TL;DR: declines always take longer than everyone predicts, but ultimately still happen. Comebacks generally speaking don't.

cma 3y ago
Mastodon has no algorithm, if one guy posts 30 things you get them sequentially so it is dominated by who types the most until they eventually annoy you enough to unfollow them. No algorithm also means you don't filter out their meal photos etc. based on clicking not interested. Twitter is maybe even worse now though, no matter how many times you click not interested on hard right content, street fights, etc. it just forces it on you. They have stop letting you adjust aspects of your feed.
- mjr00 3y ago
  > Twitter is maybe even worse now though, no matter how many times you click not interested on hard right content, street fights, etc. it just forces it on you. I have literally never seen this stuff in my feed. Are you commenting on or reposting far right content or street fights? Even if you're commenting or reposting to say how awful the content is, that still counts as "engagement" and will cause the algorithm to give you more of it.
  - raincole 3y ago
    Anecdotally I've never seen these before. However it keeps pushing AI related posts to me (I never comment or reposting them). I feel it just push a specific topic to a specific account for a while and see if it 'clicks'.
  - cma 3y ago
    I clicked not interested every time until I gave up and left the site. I never engage with it with likes or comments.
  - escapedmoose 3y ago
    It’s not just that person! I logged back into my long-unused Twitter within the past year (to delete my account) and was presented the same type of content they mentioned above. This despite the fact that my ancient account was dedicated to Animal Crossing memes and whatever books I was reading at the time, never used for anything political. The feed pushed a whole slew of far-right “thinkers,” which was pretty shocking to see.
- lucideer 3y ago
  > Mastodon has no algorithm This isn't about whether Mastodon is better or any other existing alternative though: people as a group are less interested in individual rational concerns like these and will ultimately go where the network is, and wherever it's going to (yet to be decided) it's clearly moving away from Twitter. Slowly, but surely.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gfodor 3y ago
"Comeback" vs "decline" is just a rhetorical frame. Ultimately what I see is that Twitter has a unsurpassed level of social graph in terms of metcalfe connectivity, and that the value of the network itself seems to provide a significant force for people to come back. It's not hard to understand why: Fowler's post shows it. The fact he can't sever his connection to X because there are people on there shows that this is an unstable state. The question is which way things will tip given that networks inevitably consolidate. The next stable state of consolidation is either some new network with dense connectivity or an existing one. So, you have to be able to point at what that network is to say if you're making an actual alternative prediction.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lucideer 3y ago
  > you have to be able to point at what that network is You don't really. In fact, historically, migrations away from a large declining platform don't tend to have a unified destination. Consolidation doesn't happen directly, it's usually a later stage of any given social network (immediately preceding decline). e.g. people didn't move from MySpace to Facebook en masse. They went to LastFm, Bebo, Orkut, many other places. It wasn't until long after Myspace's decline that Facebook started to be a singular dominant force (at which stage Snapchat/Vine/Instagram/others started seeping in). > The next stable state of consolidation This "stable consolidation" tends to follow mass abandonment of a network to disparate places, it doesn't precede it.

cma 3y ago

Mastodon has no algorithm, if one guy posts 30 things you get them sequentially so it is dominated by who types the most until they eventually annoy you enough to unfollow them. No algorithm also means you don't filter out their meal photos etc. based on clicking not interested. Twitter is maybe even worse now though, no matter how many times you click not interested on hard right content, street fights, etc. it just forces it on you. They have stop letting you adjust aspects of your feed.

mjr00 3y ago
> Twitter is maybe even worse now though, no matter how many times you click not interested on hard right content, street fights, etc. it just forces it on you. I have literally never seen this stuff in my feed. Are you commenting on or reposting far right content or street fights? Even if you're commenting or reposting to say how awful the content is, that still counts as "engagement" and will cause the algorithm to give you more of it.
- raincole 3y ago
  Anecdotally I've never seen these before. However it keeps pushing AI related posts to me (I never comment or reposting them). I feel it just push a specific topic to a specific account for a while and see if it 'clicks'.
- cma 3y ago
  I clicked not interested every time until I gave up and left the site. I never engage with it with likes or comments.
- escapedmoose 3y ago
  It’s not just that person! I logged back into my long-unused Twitter within the past year (to delete my account) and was presented the same type of content they mentioned above. This despite the fact that my ancient account was dedicated to Animal Crossing memes and whatever books I was reading at the time, never used for anything political. The feed pushed a whole slew of far-right “thinkers,” which was pretty shocking to see.
lucideer 3y ago
> Mastodon has no algorithm This isn't about whether Mastodon is better or any other existing alternative though: people as a group are less interested in individual rational concerns like these and will ultimately go where the network is, and wherever it's going to (yet to be decided) it's clearly moving away from Twitter. Slowly, but surely.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

gfodor 3y ago

"Comeback" vs "decline" is just a rhetorical frame. Ultimately what I see is that Twitter has a unsurpassed level of social graph in terms of metcalfe connectivity, and that the value of the network itself seems to provide a significant force for people to come back. It's not hard to understand why: Fowler's post shows it. The fact he can't sever his connection to X because there are people on there shows that this is an unstable state. The question is which way things will tip given that networks inevitably consolidate. The next stable state of consolidation is either some new network with dense connectivity or an existing one. So, you have to be able to point at what that network is to say if you're making an actual alternative prediction.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lucideer 3y ago
> you have to be able to point at what that network is You don't really. In fact, historically, migrations away from a large declining platform don't tend to have a unified destination. Consolidation doesn't happen directly, it's usually a later stage of any given social network (immediately preceding decline). e.g. people didn't move from MySpace to Facebook en masse. They went to LastFm, Bebo, Orkut, many other places. It wasn't until long after Myspace's decline that Facebook started to be a singular dominant force (at which stage Snapchat/Vine/Instagram/others started seeping in). > The next stable state of consolidation This "stable consolidation" tends to follow mass abandonment of a network to disparate places, it doesn't precede it.