8 ms·

I'm with you that this is disappointing, but folks who use these sorts of tools tend to be a bit naive about the impact of them going away. It's a little silly,

I'm with you that this is disappointing, but folks who use these sorts of tools tend to be a bit naive about the impact of them going away. It's a little silly, to be honest. Best numbers I could come by is X does something like 100B impressions/day and x.com saw 1.2B visits in the month of December. Will some people stop seeing X posts on Nitter? Sure, maybe. Will it matter to X? I doubt it.

muppetman 3y ago
Exactly. Even the reddit blackouts etc did nothing really - sure a few people left in a huff and all that jazz, but Reddit is still trucking along happily. The only time I've seen the "eff it, we're leaving!" thing actually work was with Digg v4.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  I have seen a considerable degrading of quality on reddit since the blackouts. I use reddit for quality subject discussion in topics ranging from pressure cooking to circuit design but I also use it for general crappy banter and time wasting, and the people who would contribute useful content in the former have decreased in number while the latter have increased making the signal to noise much worse. It doesn't help that they have started placing content from more obscure subreddits onto people's front pages seemingly randomly, so people wander into places and have no idea what the culture is they are contributing to and add content which is wildly out of place. To get subject matter discussion which is reasonable I have been wandering back to bespoke forums, which isn't necessarily bad, but they still have a lot of issues. A lot of other content has moved to discord, but I won't get into how I feel about that.
- neilv 3y ago
  Although, I'm surprised how often I'm seeing the key comments I was searching for deleted. I haven't been keeping stats, but maybe around half the time. Some Reddit metrics might've hardly noticed the blips, but if they had metrics for early-Reddit qualities, such as for smart (or clever) comments, helpful information, humor, or goodwill... I suspect those would be bad. Where they're not bad might be non-frontpage subs that are still cruising along with their earlier communities. But those communities started in earlier Reddit, and I suspect that today would not have started there.
  - what 3y ago
    > metrics for early-Reddit qualities Those had already tanked before any API changes.
- nunez 3y ago
  Nah, the blackouts definitely hurt Reddit. Deleted posts are the norm now. This was not the case before the API changes.
  - muppetman 3y ago
    Fair point, I have myself noticed a lot more deleted posts. I doubt their bottom line has hurt much though.
  - MikusR 3y ago
    Deleted and overwritten posts were a thing for long before the api change.
    - jdiff 3y ago
      "A thing" is substantially different from what they claimed, that it's now the norm.
      - MikusR 3y ago
        Not in my experience.
    - nunez 3y ago
      yes, but they are every other post you find on google now. i certainly didn't help; i used shreddit to overwrite then delete my posts.
- AndroTux 3y ago
  Tumblr with their NSFW removal change as well.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
It's created a reverse eternal September. The masses stay confined to one place. Other places can flourish with the old school smaller community kind of feel and quality. Let twitter live in its current state if it means other places won't be taken over by influencers and other bullshit.
- hexage1814 3y ago
  Will the other places resist to VC money or other shenanigans though? That's the question...
  - jdiff 3y ago
    There's too many other places. VC can't find every tiny community out there, or even any noteworthy portion of them. Places small enough to still have a coherent sense of community are beneath the notice of VC.
- nomilk 3y ago
  This is nice in theory. I haven't used any twitter alternatives but others seem to report that their content is more or less the same as twitter's.
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    We're all sharing the same links, articles, jokes, memes, ideas, cat pictures. What differentiates a place is its sense of community, not its content. It's easy to forget that because Twitter long ago stopped being a community.
    - nomilk 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - tga_d 3y ago
        >The Elon era seems to emphasise truth over sensitivities I've never heard anyone claim that misinformation went down with the acquisition--Musk infamously gutted that department, and I've seen plenty of claims at least from journalists and the EU that the problem is now worse. Anecdotally, I left Twitter not for ideological reasons, but because my timeline become filled with algorithmic noise from what were clearly bots I wasn't following. Do you have evidence to back up that claim? >some suspected (but couldn't prove) being shadow banned for having contrarian viewpoints. I would think we would have seen actual indication of that by now if that were true; given all the "Twitter files" and whatnot that turned out to be a nothingburger, if there was a there there, employees were certainly motivated to air it after the acquisition, if not before. In any case, it's certainly indisputable that Musk has been more than willing to artificially inflate accounts he wants to promote (the latest I know of being the Mr. Beast debacle), which, outside of expressly labelled advertising, I don't remember being a thing before, though again, I'm open to the possibility of being wrong about that.

muppetman 3y ago

Exactly. Even the reddit blackouts etc did nothing really - sure a few people left in a huff and all that jazz, but Reddit is still trucking along happily. The only time I've seen the "eff it, we're leaving!" thing actually work was with Digg v4.

Eisenstein 3y ago
I have seen a considerable degrading of quality on reddit since the blackouts. I use reddit for quality subject discussion in topics ranging from pressure cooking to circuit design but I also use it for general crappy banter and time wasting, and the people who would contribute useful content in the former have decreased in number while the latter have increased making the signal to noise much worse. It doesn't help that they have started placing content from more obscure subreddits onto people's front pages seemingly randomly, so people wander into places and have no idea what the culture is they are contributing to and add content which is wildly out of place. To get subject matter discussion which is reasonable I have been wandering back to bespoke forums, which isn't necessarily bad, but they still have a lot of issues. A lot of other content has moved to discord, but I won't get into how I feel about that.
neilv 3y ago
Although, I'm surprised how often I'm seeing the key comments I was searching for deleted. I haven't been keeping stats, but maybe around half the time. Some Reddit metrics might've hardly noticed the blips, but if they had metrics for early-Reddit qualities, such as for smart (or clever) comments, helpful information, humor, or goodwill... I suspect those would be bad. Where they're not bad might be non-frontpage subs that are still cruising along with their earlier communities. But those communities started in earlier Reddit, and I suspect that today would not have started there.
- what 3y ago
  > metrics for early-Reddit qualities Those had already tanked before any API changes.
nunez 3y ago
Nah, the blackouts definitely hurt Reddit. Deleted posts are the norm now. This was not the case before the API changes.
- muppetman 3y ago
  Fair point, I have myself noticed a lot more deleted posts. I doubt their bottom line has hurt much though.
- MikusR 3y ago
  Deleted and overwritten posts were a thing for long before the api change.
  - jdiff 3y ago
    "A thing" is substantially different from what they claimed, that it's now the norm.
    - MikusR 3y ago
      Not in my experience.
  - nunez 3y ago
    yes, but they are every other post you find on google now. i certainly didn't help; i used shreddit to overwrite then delete my posts.
AndroTux 3y ago
Tumblr with their NSFW removal change as well.

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago

It's created a reverse eternal September. The masses stay confined to one place. Other places can flourish with the old school smaller community kind of feel and quality. Let twitter live in its current state if it means other places won't be taken over by influencers and other bullshit.

hexage1814 3y ago
Will the other places resist to VC money or other shenanigans though? That's the question...
- jdiff 3y ago
  There's too many other places. VC can't find every tiny community out there, or even any noteworthy portion of them. Places small enough to still have a coherent sense of community are beneath the notice of VC.
nomilk 3y ago
This is nice in theory. I haven't used any twitter alternatives but others seem to report that their content is more or less the same as twitter's.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  We're all sharing the same links, articles, jokes, memes, ideas, cat pictures. What differentiates a place is its sense of community, not its content. It's easy to forget that because Twitter long ago stopped being a community.
  - nomilk 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - tga_d 3y ago
      >The Elon era seems to emphasise truth over sensitivities I've never heard anyone claim that misinformation went down with the acquisition--Musk infamously gutted that department, and I've seen plenty of claims at least from journalists and the EU that the problem is now worse. Anecdotally, I left Twitter not for ideological reasons, but because my timeline become filled with algorithmic noise from what were clearly bots I wasn't following. Do you have evidence to back up that claim? >some suspected (but couldn't prove) being shadow banned for having contrarian viewpoints. I would think we would have seen actual indication of that by now if that were true; given all the "Twitter files" and whatnot that turned out to be a nothingburger, if there was a there there, employees were certainly motivated to air it after the acquisition, if not before. In any case, it's certainly indisputable that Musk has been more than willing to artificially inflate accounts he wants to promote (the latest I know of being the Mr. Beast debacle), which, outside of expressly labelled advertising, I don't remember being a thing before, though again, I'm open to the possibility of being wrong about that.