4 ms·

Obviously it's not W3C, but I keep wondering what account leaving Twitter would feel like an absolute nail in the coffin of the platform.

dna_polymerase 3y ago
@elonmusk
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
callalex 3y ago
There will be no one single event, it is dying a slow death by a thousand cuts, just like failed social media sites that preceded it.
- sgift 3y ago
  Yeah. Just like it went for ... Digg? I think Digg? .. at some point people didn't care anymore and it left the public consciousness.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Digg’s implosion was fairly rapid by social media standards, really; only took about a year to become totally irrelevant.
autoexec 3y ago
Yours. Leave twitter for good and the platform is dead to you.
- bensecure 3y ago
  i only visit twitter because somebody's linked to it. i'm not interested in opting out of a large number of discussions just because they take place in part on twitter.
- moduspol 3y ago
  Not really. Twitter is where the influential people are, and where the day's narratives and news are shaped. That's why it was so important to Elon. Even if you personally don't use Twitter, virtually all the contemporary media you consume is being molded by it. Even today. It'll take a lot more influential people to drop it or move elsewhere before it won't be significantly impacting your life. In the US, at least. I don't know how seriously it's taken in other countries.
  - tayo42 3y ago
    This is an opinion that people who spend to much time on Twitter have. Take two weeks off, you'll realize that it really isn't that important. Most people don't use it.
    - moduspol 3y ago
      I've only been on Twitter fairly recently. This was plain as day long before then. My being off Twitter won't make the news, media, culture, or politics less influenced by it.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        > My being off Twitter won't make the news, media, culture, or politics less influenced by it. How do you think "the news, media, culture, or politics" are influenced by Twitter except via the people doing the influencing and the people being influenced both being on Twitter? People leaving Twitter does reduce its social impact.
        johnnyanmac 3y ago
        The influencers are the key, and unless you are a big influencer, leaving twitter as an individual will have negligible impact. The former is big enough that the latter will stay even when all this is happening. It is indeed a medium, but it's a medium becoming more and more compromised, as we've seen over the months So you either need influencers to shift out (which is happening, slowly. But I'm not sure if it'll be enough to "kill" Twitter) or somehow generate a new batch of influencers for a competitor. Both are hard.
woodruffw 3y ago
In many ways, the nail is already in the coffin: navigating to the homepage no longer gives me relevant content. From loading it just now: my top feed items are over 60% "interaction bait," i.e. ranked posts from accounts that I don't follow. When I turn off my adblocking rules, these are interspersed with bottom-barrel advertisements. In other words: it's dead, but the corpse is still warm.
- sergiotapia 3y ago
  On the opposite end, I've never used Twitter before Musk's takeover. Now it's my #1 used social app. Incredibly funny, interesting and relevant tweets are on my timeline. What surprised me was how QUICKLY tiktok died for me! It's so vanilla and boring these days, every second video is some ad of a chinese dude selling me some trinket. It's very strange. Instagram caught up with their reel tech, and instagram is just a wild west of content and comments, love it!
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    > On the opposite end, I've never used Twitter before Musk's takeover. Now it's my #1 used social app. Incredibly funny, interesting and relevant tweets are on my timeline. This is consumption-side growth, not production-side. A similar thing happened with Facebook when it went all-in on algorithmic feeds: engagement went up, but actual organic content production went down. Ultimately, whether or not you find that distinction interesting depends on how you use the Internet. But much of the demographic that found Twitter fun and useful before 2022 isn't interested in a reskinned Facebook or Instagram, which is what the current site is.
    - passion__desire 3y ago
      By organic, if you mean people close to me then yes. But I get that in whatsapp. Also normal people are boring af. There is power law distribution in people's interestingness as well, basically in every aspect, whether it be creativity, expertise and so on. These are skills which very few people work on and very few pursue it.
fullshark 3y ago
@dril
superfrank 3y ago
I don't think there is any one account other than Musk. Twitter is unique to each user and what matters may not matter to you. I'm sure for some people Taylor Swift leaving would be the nail in the coffin, but personally, I couldn't care less (I actually just had to check if she even had a Twitter account before posting). If Twitter is going to be declared dead, I think it will likely be an avalanche type thing. It won't be any individual account that kills it, but rather a large amount of prominent accounts across multiple parts of our culture.
riffic 3y ago
the process of attrition of high value content itself will be how this plays out.
- passion__desire 3y ago
  As I understand, people should be exposed to the stuff which they disagree with. This creates friction which platforms like Instagram, Tiktok don't like because people hop on to relax and not get their blood boiled. Negative feedback is good. It's a simple reasoning. Even in our brains, we have inhibitory neurons to put breaks on, otherwise we would all be in epileptic storms of neuronal firing. The world is not a utopia which reflects in digital interactions and should be used as data to correct everyone's behaviour rather than impose one viewpoint.
  - etchalon 3y ago
    A product which does things that users don't like "for their own good" isn't a product that is going to attract as many users as one that "does stuff the users like".
    - passion__desire 3y ago
      The problem isn't nuanced debate isn't happening on the platform which will benefit everyone but metrics like "likes" which lead to gaming the metrics and race to the bottom. Facebook realized it too late. It is possible for people to benefit from listening to both sides and come out better informed but it is totally impossible to resurface those with primitive metrics like "likes". Hopefully LLMs will allow us to do that better. There should be some top-down handcrafting to steer in better directions. Apparently our brain has both top-down and bottom-up processes which meet at the middle to figure out ground truth.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    To a point, but not all opinions are worthwhile. I disagree with paleo-Republican fiscal policy, but in an academic "I see what you're getting at but don't think it's correct" way. It's interesting and instructive to have that debate, though. Even if I'm not persuaded, afterward I can appreciate the other person's viewpoints and respect that smart people might come to different conclusions than I do. Some rando spouting that "Jews are taking over the world" or something else ridiculous isn't worth engaging or hearing out. I have no interest in a service exposing me to idiotic opinions like that against my will.
maelito 3y ago
I can't speak for the world in general. But from the French perspective (surely at least 90% of French consume 90% of French content), politics and journalists hold the platform. Institutions are already starting to leave. E.g, you can be sure that if Macron starts tweeting from mastodon (the gov has an official instance https://social.numerique.gouv.fr https://social.numerique.gouv.fr), thousands of journalists and politics will switch.
cutemonster 3y ago
If Twitter leaves Twitter. That's the nail in the coffin. But maybe there are more nails, any will do
rsynnott 3y ago
It's not going to be any one magical account; it's just slow general decline, which is how social media sites normally die.

dna_polymerase 3y ago

@elonmusk

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

callalex 3y ago

There will be no one single event, it is dying a slow death by a thousand cuts, just like failed social media sites that preceded it.

sgift 3y ago
Yeah. Just like it went for ... Digg? I think Digg? .. at some point people didn't care anymore and it left the public consciousness.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Digg’s implosion was fairly rapid by social media standards, really; only took about a year to become totally irrelevant.

autoexec 3y ago

Yours. Leave twitter for good and the platform is dead to you.

bensecure 3y ago
i only visit twitter because somebody's linked to it. i'm not interested in opting out of a large number of discussions just because they take place in part on twitter.
moduspol 3y ago
Not really. Twitter is where the influential people are, and where the day's narratives and news are shaped. That's why it was so important to Elon. Even if you personally don't use Twitter, virtually all the contemporary media you consume is being molded by it. Even today. It'll take a lot more influential people to drop it or move elsewhere before it won't be significantly impacting your life. In the US, at least. I don't know how seriously it's taken in other countries.
- tayo42 3y ago
  This is an opinion that people who spend to much time on Twitter have. Take two weeks off, you'll realize that it really isn't that important. Most people don't use it.
  - moduspol 3y ago
    I've only been on Twitter fairly recently. This was plain as day long before then. My being off Twitter won't make the news, media, culture, or politics less influenced by it.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > My being off Twitter won't make the news, media, culture, or politics less influenced by it. How do you think "the news, media, culture, or politics" are influenced by Twitter except via the people doing the influencing and the people being influenced both being on Twitter? People leaving Twitter does reduce its social impact.
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        The influencers are the key, and unless you are a big influencer, leaving twitter as an individual will have negligible impact. The former is big enough that the latter will stay even when all this is happening. It is indeed a medium, but it's a medium becoming more and more compromised, as we've seen over the months So you either need influencers to shift out (which is happening, slowly. But I'm not sure if it'll be enough to "kill" Twitter) or somehow generate a new batch of influencers for a competitor. Both are hard.

woodruffw 3y ago

In many ways, the nail is already in the coffin: navigating to the homepage no longer gives me relevant content. From loading it just now: my top feed items are over 60% "interaction bait," i.e. ranked posts from accounts that I don't follow. When I turn off my adblocking rules, these are interspersed with bottom-barrel advertisements. In other words: it's dead, but the corpse is still warm.

sergiotapia 3y ago
On the opposite end, I've never used Twitter before Musk's takeover. Now it's my #1 used social app. Incredibly funny, interesting and relevant tweets are on my timeline. What surprised me was how QUICKLY tiktok died for me! It's so vanilla and boring these days, every second video is some ad of a chinese dude selling me some trinket. It's very strange. Instagram caught up with their reel tech, and instagram is just a wild west of content and comments, love it!
- woodruffw 3y ago
  > On the opposite end, I've never used Twitter before Musk's takeover. Now it's my #1 used social app. Incredibly funny, interesting and relevant tweets are on my timeline. This is consumption-side growth, not production-side. A similar thing happened with Facebook when it went all-in on algorithmic feeds: engagement went up, but actual organic content production went down. Ultimately, whether or not you find that distinction interesting depends on how you use the Internet. But much of the demographic that found Twitter fun and useful before 2022 isn't interested in a reskinned Facebook or Instagram, which is what the current site is.
  - passion__desire 3y ago
    By organic, if you mean people close to me then yes. But I get that in whatsapp. Also normal people are boring af. There is power law distribution in people's interestingness as well, basically in every aspect, whether it be creativity, expertise and so on. These are skills which very few people work on and very few pursue it.

fullshark 3y ago

@dril

superfrank 3y ago

I don't think there is any one account other than Musk. Twitter is unique to each user and what matters may not matter to you. I'm sure for some people Taylor Swift leaving would be the nail in the coffin, but personally, I couldn't care less (I actually just had to check if she even had a Twitter account before posting). If Twitter is going to be declared dead, I think it will likely be an avalanche type thing. It won't be any individual account that kills it, but rather a large amount of prominent accounts across multiple parts of our culture.

riffic 3y ago

the process of attrition of high value content itself will be how this plays out.

passion__desire 3y ago
As I understand, people should be exposed to the stuff which they disagree with. This creates friction which platforms like Instagram, Tiktok don't like because people hop on to relax and not get their blood boiled. Negative feedback is good. It's a simple reasoning. Even in our brains, we have inhibitory neurons to put breaks on, otherwise we would all be in epileptic storms of neuronal firing. The world is not a utopia which reflects in digital interactions and should be used as data to correct everyone's behaviour rather than impose one viewpoint.
- etchalon 3y ago
  A product which does things that users don't like "for their own good" isn't a product that is going to attract as many users as one that "does stuff the users like".
  - passion__desire 3y ago
    The problem isn't nuanced debate isn't happening on the platform which will benefit everyone but metrics like "likes" which lead to gaming the metrics and race to the bottom. Facebook realized it too late. It is possible for people to benefit from listening to both sides and come out better informed but it is totally impossible to resurface those with primitive metrics like "likes". Hopefully LLMs will allow us to do that better. There should be some top-down handcrafting to steer in better directions. Apparently our brain has both top-down and bottom-up processes which meet at the middle to figure out ground truth.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  To a point, but not all opinions are worthwhile. I disagree with paleo-Republican fiscal policy, but in an academic "I see what you're getting at but don't think it's correct" way. It's interesting and instructive to have that debate, though. Even if I'm not persuaded, afterward I can appreciate the other person's viewpoints and respect that smart people might come to different conclusions than I do. Some rando spouting that "Jews are taking over the world" or something else ridiculous isn't worth engaging or hearing out. I have no interest in a service exposing me to idiotic opinions like that against my will.

maelito 3y ago

I can't speak for the world in general. But from the French perspective (surely at least 90% of French consume 90% of French content), politics and journalists hold the platform. Institutions are already starting to leave. E.g, you can be sure that if Macron starts tweeting from mastodon (the gov has an official instance https://social.numerique.gouv.fr https://social.numerique.gouv.fr), thousands of journalists and politics will switch.

cutemonster 3y ago

If Twitter leaves Twitter. That's the nail in the coffin. But maybe there are more nails, any will do

rsynnott 3y ago

It's not going to be any one magical account; it's just slow general decline, which is how social media sites normally die.