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Aside: it is the second day in a row that a thread from Mastodon ends up on the frontpage of HN. When was the last time I Twitter thread did the same, and does

Aside: it is the second day in a row that a thread from Mastodon ends up on the frontpage of HN. When was the last time I Twitter thread did the same, and does anyone else doubts that Twitter is no longer at the center of tech-related conversation?

chrismorgan 3y ago
Based on https://news.ycombinator.com/front https://news.ycombinator.com/front for the last ten days: one today, one five days ago, three seven days ago, two nine days ago.
JimDabell 3y ago
A lot of the recent OpenAI events that were posted here were links to Twitter and I’ve seen plenty of people point this out as evidence that Twitter still is at the centre.
- rglullis 3y ago
  The OpenAI saga was such an outlier in the usual news cycle, it is hard to use it as a measure of anything.
  - subtra3t 3y ago
    You can't call any piece of evidence that happens to not support your theory as being an outlier. And even then the OpenAI saga is probably the most important development in tech in the last 10 years (conservatively).
    - wizzwizz4 3y ago
      Perhaps, in terms of how much it's affecting Silicon Valley; though I'd say iPhone adoption, the tail-end of Flash, the death of ActiveX, the destruction of libraries, and the growth of Amazon were all more impactful, there. Probably not, in terms of how much 2040s tech will be based on this stuff. Language models are good for machine translation, and real-time image transcription, but everything else I've seen them do has better solutions (which have been around for decades in many cases, but don't have much funding).
      - JimDabell 3y ago
        > iPhone adoption, the tail-end of Flash, the death of ActiveX, the destruction of libraries, and the growth of Amazon were all more impactful, there. Not sure what you’re referring to with “the destruction of libraries”, but all of the others happened more than ten years ago.
  - tambourine_man 3y ago
    Also, lots of OpenAI fans and venture capital/crypto people are still on Xitter. It’s a special demography that makes it more an outlier.
- ImaCake 3y ago
  This is part of the current cycle of fragmentation. Twitter is no longer the centre, but it still holds certain cultural niches. Other niches have migrated to Mastodon or elsewhere. I am personally pretty excited to see this diversification and fragmentation as it should help provide more niches for more people.
  - sixQuarks 3y ago
    Mastodon… lol. Is that even still alive? Are you gonna say that Threads is thriving as well?
    - ImaCake 3y ago
      The OP link is to a very much alive mastodon instance… so yes its doing fine. No idea about Threads but apparently some people use it.
      - sixQuarks 3y ago
        But your claim is that twitter is no longer the center and many niches have migrated to Mastodon. I highly doubt this, unless you can point out an actual niche where Mastodon has more active discussions than twitter.
        rglullis 3y ago
        My claim is not "many niches migrated to Mastodon", but "Twitter is not at the center of tech discussion". At least, not for the hacker types. Even here, the majority of HN links that show up as a Twitter thread are about technology "businesses", not tech itself.
        sixQuarks 3y ago
        I don’t know how you can say that. The whole fiasco with open AI recently was a good example of how Twitter was the place where you could really stay up-to-date with everything going on. All the main players were posting there. I love HN, but just because there wasn’t a lot of links to Twitter doesn’t mean it’s not the center of tech discussion
jansan 3y ago
What you are experiencing is a great example of confirmation bias.
dpkirchner 3y ago
I'm just glad to see the entire thread of conversation without having to switch to nitter or whatever.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  Are you familiar with the libredirect plugin? It can automatically rewrite all twitter links to point at nitter instead.
  - dpkirchner 3y ago
    I'm not, but I'm on mobile Safari 99% of the time. I see there is an extension that does something similar, which I'll check out. Thanks for the nudge.
georgehotelling 3y ago
One difference is that Twitter no longer shows threads to logged-out users, while Mastodon does. If someone posted the same thread to both sites, the Mastodon one would be better to link to.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  I think this is a misfeature that will hurt Twitter going forward. I don't bother clicking a link to a Twitter thread any more because I know I'm just going to get prompted to log into the account I don't have. And I don't care enough to use an alternate tool, so I just move on. I expect I'm not alone.
  - rainworld 3y ago
    But it is a feature. Musk’s takeover of BLUEBIRD is a deliberate act of transmutation, possibly even demolition.

chrismorgan 3y ago

Based on https://news.ycombinator.com/front https://news.ycombinator.com/front for the last ten days: one today, one five days ago, three seven days ago, two nine days ago.

JimDabell 3y ago

A lot of the recent OpenAI events that were posted here were links to Twitter and I’ve seen plenty of people point this out as evidence that Twitter still is at the centre.

rglullis 3y ago
The OpenAI saga was such an outlier in the usual news cycle, it is hard to use it as a measure of anything.
- subtra3t 3y ago
  You can't call any piece of evidence that happens to not support your theory as being an outlier. And even then the OpenAI saga is probably the most important development in tech in the last 10 years (conservatively).
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    Perhaps, in terms of how much it's affecting Silicon Valley; though I'd say iPhone adoption, the tail-end of Flash, the death of ActiveX, the destruction of libraries, and the growth of Amazon were all more impactful, there. Probably not, in terms of how much 2040s tech will be based on this stuff. Language models are good for machine translation, and real-time image transcription, but everything else I've seen them do has better solutions (which have been around for decades in many cases, but don't have much funding).
    - JimDabell 3y ago
      > iPhone adoption, the tail-end of Flash, the death of ActiveX, the destruction of libraries, and the growth of Amazon were all more impactful, there. Not sure what you’re referring to with “the destruction of libraries”, but all of the others happened more than ten years ago.
- tambourine_man 3y ago
  Also, lots of OpenAI fans and venture capital/crypto people are still on Xitter. It’s a special demography that makes it more an outlier.
ImaCake 3y ago
This is part of the current cycle of fragmentation. Twitter is no longer the centre, but it still holds certain cultural niches. Other niches have migrated to Mastodon or elsewhere. I am personally pretty excited to see this diversification and fragmentation as it should help provide more niches for more people.
- sixQuarks 3y ago
  Mastodon… lol. Is that even still alive? Are you gonna say that Threads is thriving as well?
  - ImaCake 3y ago
    The OP link is to a very much alive mastodon instance… so yes its doing fine. No idea about Threads but apparently some people use it.
    - sixQuarks 3y ago
      But your claim is that twitter is no longer the center and many niches have migrated to Mastodon. I highly doubt this, unless you can point out an actual niche where Mastodon has more active discussions than twitter.
      - rglullis 3y ago
        My claim is not "many niches migrated to Mastodon", but "Twitter is not at the center of tech discussion". At least, not for the hacker types. Even here, the majority of HN links that show up as a Twitter thread are about technology "businesses", not tech itself.
        sixQuarks 3y ago
        I don’t know how you can say that. The whole fiasco with open AI recently was a good example of how Twitter was the place where you could really stay up-to-date with everything going on. All the main players were posting there. I love HN, but just because there wasn’t a lot of links to Twitter doesn’t mean it’s not the center of tech discussion

jansan 3y ago

What you are experiencing is a great example of confirmation bias.

dpkirchner 3y ago

I'm just glad to see the entire thread of conversation without having to switch to nitter or whatever.

marssaxman 3y ago
Are you familiar with the libredirect plugin? It can automatically rewrite all twitter links to point at nitter instead.
- dpkirchner 3y ago
  I'm not, but I'm on mobile Safari 99% of the time. I see there is an extension that does something similar, which I'll check out. Thanks for the nudge.

georgehotelling 3y ago

One difference is that Twitter no longer shows threads to logged-out users, while Mastodon does. If someone posted the same thread to both sites, the Mastodon one would be better to link to.

rootusrootus 3y ago
I think this is a misfeature that will hurt Twitter going forward. I don't bother clicking a link to a Twitter thread any more because I know I'm just going to get prompted to log into the account I don't have. And I don't care enough to use an alternate tool, so I just move on. I expect I'm not alone.
- rainworld 3y ago
  But it is a feature. Musk’s takeover of BLUEBIRD is a deliberate act of transmutation, possibly even demolition.