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Around when Elon bought twitter he said (paraphrased) that twitter was the realtime news platform. It’s something I feel like is true in a way that should be tr

Around when Elon bought twitter he said (paraphrased) that twitter was the realtime news platform. It’s something I feel like is true in a way that should be true for other social media platforms but isn’t. For example, say I’m in traffic on the highway. Searching 401 might in this example surface tweets from other drivers on the highway talking about traffic and/or posts about an accident they came across. Nothing about this sort of interaction is baked into the protocol as far as I can tell yet FB insta snap etc don’t work this way.

loloquwowndueo 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Keyframe 2y ago
  Maybe he's interested in realtime offers for cryptocurrencies or 1/10 of a thread with videos you wouldn't believe! Premise was good, execution terrible, and ever since Musk took over it's suffocated in spam with a spice of right wingery to it.
- sparky_z 2y ago
  Who said they were driving?
  - loloquwowndueo 2y ago
    > say I’m in traffic on the highway. Searching 401 Takes a lot of good faith to not think the above implies they’re searching twitter while sitting in traffic in a car they’re driving. They never said “I can ask a passenger to search…” or anything of the sort.
    - new_user_final 2y ago
      English is not my first language and I clearly understand that it implies that that-person wants to know why the cars are not moving (traffic) while sitting in a car as a driver or passenger.
    - woleium 2y ago
      you can search twitter safely, hands free with audio only.
      - johnisgood 2y ago
        I thought we all agreed it is still a distraction.
    - throw0101a 2y ago
      > Takes a lot of good faith to not think the above implies they’re searching twitter while sitting in traffic in a car they’re driving. Anyone that know's anything about the 401 in Ontario knows that you are not driving on it, but are stopped in a parking lot. :)
    - edude03 2y ago
      Only takes a lot of good faith if you assume the worst in people. But yes, I’m married and sometimes while my wife is driving I’ll use my phone. More importantly though it was just a randomly picked use case. Whether twitter is a good news platform or not doesn’t depend on whether it is used while driving
    - sparky_z 2y ago
      "They never said “I can ask a passenger to search…” or anything of the sort." It would be weird for them to say that if, for example, they were the passenger...
troupo 2y ago
> Nothing about this sort of interaction is baked into the protocol as far as I can tell yet FB insta snap etc don’t work this way. Neither does Twitter. Its search is frequently broken to push whatever the new version of their algorithm decides to push. If Musk so wishes your entire feed will be just his rants (something I experienced a few weeks ago). Pre-Musk and pre-algorithm Twitter was a good source of news, as it was near-realtime, and relevant to you. Now? No.
- tempest_ 2y ago
  Can you see profiles without logging in again? Something that really pissed me off is how much of a "support channel" it became for things like my internet provider. If the internet went down their twitter was often the only place you could get info.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    Yeah I hate that kind of "Well, everyone uses it", whether it's Twitter or WhatsApp or anything. Even POTS and email are pretty shit in their own way
    - bruce511 2y ago
      It's hard to communicate without first agreeing on the medium of communication. When joining a group its easiest to simply adopt the choice the group has already made. Companies chose Twitter because lots of people (their customers) already used it. If their customers move, and indicate a preference, they'll happily move too. Personally I don't use Twitter. Lots of businesses post on Twitter, and they're welcome to do so. I do use WhatsApp. Which has traditionally been business unfriendly. The odd business will connect with me that way, but that's rare. Email, web, phone, IRL - these all seem to be working well here, but your mileage may vary. Hopefully you have some choices.
      - timeon 2y ago
        The thing is that one did not need to be Twitter user to check updates from company on Twitter when needed. This is no longer that easy. That is why some companies (in my country, like train company) move to platforms that can be viewed without account. There are no many users there but anyone can follow link there when he needs it.
scarface_74 2y ago
Twitter can’t be a news platform when tweets with links are suppressed
- jaimex2 2y ago
  You mean it can't be a link platform. Maybe thats a good thing. It forces content to be posted to X directly instead of click baiting you into ad infested, paywalled, dark pattern websites. The only losers here are legacy media.
  - matthewdgreen 2y ago
    Links are incredibly useful. Leaving aside the dubious benefit of the idea that we want everything to "be inside the same app" (an idea that is essentially 'platform lock-in rephrased as a feature'), a huge amount of useful content is already on web pages with URLs. The ability to share those resources quickly is essential. There's zero benefit to forcing users into copying and pasting existing text into a medium with extreme formatting limitations and no ability to handle dynamic content or inline images. And there is negative benefit from moving content from the open web to a site that requires a login.
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      This doesn’t really make sense without a well reasoned out argument. How can your opinion outweigh that of the various decision makers who originally agreed to implement it…?
      - judahmeek 2y ago
        > How can your opinion outweigh that of the various decision makers who originally agreed to implement it…? Through subjectivity, of course.
      - schneems 2y ago
        > Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web, chose the name “World Wide Web” because he wanted to emphasize that, in this global hypertext system, anything could link to anything else https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/why-the-web-is-called-the-world-wide-web/ https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/why-the-web... The net is fundamentally about linking things together.
morkalork 2y ago
[flagged]
- steveBK123 2y ago
  Came here to say same, sad to see this downvoted. Stay off your smartphones when behind the wheel. I don’t care how slow you are going or how important you think you are. If it’s urgent pull over.
harrall 2y ago
It’s because it’s okay to post mundane things on Twitter/X. It’s because tweets are short and are very fleeting. An Instagram post takes up my whole screen and a picture is expected. Each post is given so much real estate and it makes you want to dress it up. In the end, those different amounts of “friction” lends to posting different kinds of content. It’s a vibe of a high end dinner establishment vs. a quick pickup place. They have their own lanes.
- mcny 2y ago
  I want to piggyback to compare TikTok and YouTube. It is so much easier to post a quick fifteen second clip on TikTok on their mobile app. Compare to the same on YouTube, I feel a lot more friction. I don't know if it is justified but maybe I haven't used TikTok enough to be afraid there. For example, I learned early on that a video of a party with music playing in the background is a bad idea™ on YouTube.
- edude03 2y ago
  Yeah I think it comes down to two things 1) the low friction leading to more mundane things being posted 2) the norm being text content not from people you necessarily follow / people who aren’t “celebrities” so mundane relatable things tend to bubble up. I do wonder if one day video understanding LLMs will be able to understand what a photo/video is about and show you content that’s relevant to you
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
aorloff 2y ago
And when he bought it, it was
paul7986 2y ago
Yet Twitter now X is just our modern day 4chan owned by the richest man in the world. Never have ever seen such insane things (people shot point blank in the head & the gruesomeness of it) I didnt need to see (scrolling thru) and all thanks to X.
philipwhiuk 2y ago
> Nothing about this sort of interaction is baked into the protocol as far as I can tell yet FB insta snap etc don’t work this way. It's baked into the UI. Public by default. Facebook is personal by default. You post stuff on 'your feed', you view 'your friends' updates. Late in the game Facebook realised this was a problem and has tried to cram other stuff into people's feeds - viral content. And people hate it. People want their Facebook feed to be stuff from people they know and they see the other injected content (meme groups, assorted interest groups, comics, etc) as little more than extra adverts. Contrastingly Twitter was always the public firehose and so while many people do not care for it, those that do, are opting into it, not trying to opt out.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  What's amazing is it seems nobody (big/public) is trying to really make a thing which is personal as you describe. It's all twitter rip-offs, microblogging narcissistic megaphone attempts. I don't care a bit about bluesky, and while I check on my Mastodon feed a few times a week I don't interact there much either. This "look at me, whole world!" phenomenon is of very little interest to me. I despise what Meta has become, but I don't see an alternative yet to FB.
  - philipwhiuk 2y ago
    > What's amazing is it seems nobody (big/public) is trying to really make a thing which is personal as you describe. The problem is the monetisation of it.
_fat_santa 2y ago
> For example, say I’m in traffic on the highway. Searching 401 might in this example surface tweets from other drivers on the highway talking about traffic and/or posts about an accident they came across. The problem I have on Twitter now is that folks hijack that and post tweets about totally unrelated stuff (usually crypto). Take you example that there is a huge wreck on the 401 and you want to find out what's going on. Go on Twitter and the top post will be something like: "Get your Airdrop to $NEWCRYPTO Today. iPhone 12, 401 Crash, Cute Cats"

loloquwowndueo 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Keyframe 2y ago
Maybe he's interested in realtime offers for cryptocurrencies or 1/10 of a thread with videos you wouldn't believe! Premise was good, execution terrible, and ever since Musk took over it's suffocated in spam with a spice of right wingery to it.
sparky_z 2y ago
Who said they were driving?
- loloquwowndueo 2y ago
  > say I’m in traffic on the highway. Searching 401 Takes a lot of good faith to not think the above implies they’re searching twitter while sitting in traffic in a car they’re driving. They never said “I can ask a passenger to search…” or anything of the sort.
  - new_user_final 2y ago
    English is not my first language and I clearly understand that it implies that that-person wants to know why the cars are not moving (traffic) while sitting in a car as a driver or passenger.
  - woleium 2y ago
    you can search twitter safely, hands free with audio only.
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      I thought we all agreed it is still a distraction.
  - throw0101a 2y ago
    > Takes a lot of good faith to not think the above implies they’re searching twitter while sitting in traffic in a car they’re driving. Anyone that know's anything about the 401 in Ontario knows that you are not driving on it, but are stopped in a parking lot. :)
  - edude03 2y ago
    Only takes a lot of good faith if you assume the worst in people. But yes, I’m married and sometimes while my wife is driving I’ll use my phone. More importantly though it was just a randomly picked use case. Whether twitter is a good news platform or not doesn’t depend on whether it is used while driving
  - sparky_z 2y ago
    "They never said “I can ask a passenger to search…” or anything of the sort." It would be weird for them to say that if, for example, they were the passenger...

troupo 2y ago

> Nothing about this sort of interaction is baked into the protocol as far as I can tell yet FB insta snap etc don’t work this way. Neither does Twitter. Its search is frequently broken to push whatever the new version of their algorithm decides to push. If Musk so wishes your entire feed will be just his rants (something I experienced a few weeks ago). Pre-Musk and pre-algorithm Twitter was a good source of news, as it was near-realtime, and relevant to you. Now? No.

tempest_ 2y ago
Can you see profiles without logging in again? Something that really pissed me off is how much of a "support channel" it became for things like my internet provider. If the internet went down their twitter was often the only place you could get info.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Yeah I hate that kind of "Well, everyone uses it", whether it's Twitter or WhatsApp or anything. Even POTS and email are pretty shit in their own way
  - bruce511 2y ago
    It's hard to communicate without first agreeing on the medium of communication. When joining a group its easiest to simply adopt the choice the group has already made. Companies chose Twitter because lots of people (their customers) already used it. If their customers move, and indicate a preference, they'll happily move too. Personally I don't use Twitter. Lots of businesses post on Twitter, and they're welcome to do so. I do use WhatsApp. Which has traditionally been business unfriendly. The odd business will connect with me that way, but that's rare. Email, web, phone, IRL - these all seem to be working well here, but your mileage may vary. Hopefully you have some choices.
    - timeon 2y ago
      The thing is that one did not need to be Twitter user to check updates from company on Twitter when needed. This is no longer that easy. That is why some companies (in my country, like train company) move to platforms that can be viewed without account. There are no many users there but anyone can follow link there when he needs it.

scarface_74 2y ago

Twitter can’t be a news platform when tweets with links are suppressed

jaimex2 2y ago
You mean it can't be a link platform. Maybe thats a good thing. It forces content to be posted to X directly instead of click baiting you into ad infested, paywalled, dark pattern websites. The only losers here are legacy media.
- matthewdgreen 2y ago
  Links are incredibly useful. Leaving aside the dubious benefit of the idea that we want everything to "be inside the same app" (an idea that is essentially 'platform lock-in rephrased as a feature'), a huge amount of useful content is already on web pages with URLs. The ability to share those resources quickly is essential. There's zero benefit to forcing users into copying and pasting existing text into a medium with extreme formatting limitations and no ability to handle dynamic content or inline images. And there is negative benefit from moving content from the open web to a site that requires a login.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    This doesn’t really make sense without a well reasoned out argument. How can your opinion outweigh that of the various decision makers who originally agreed to implement it…?
    - judahmeek 2y ago
      > How can your opinion outweigh that of the various decision makers who originally agreed to implement it…? Through subjectivity, of course.
    - schneems 2y ago
      > Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web, chose the name “World Wide Web” because he wanted to emphasize that, in this global hypertext system, anything could link to anything else https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/why-the-web-is-called-the-world-wide-web/ https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/why-the-web... The net is fundamentally about linking things together.

morkalork 2y ago

[flagged]

steveBK123 2y ago
Came here to say same, sad to see this downvoted. Stay off your smartphones when behind the wheel. I don’t care how slow you are going or how important you think you are. If it’s urgent pull over.

harrall 2y ago

It’s because it’s okay to post mundane things on Twitter/X. It’s because tweets are short and are very fleeting. An Instagram post takes up my whole screen and a picture is expected. Each post is given so much real estate and it makes you want to dress it up. In the end, those different amounts of “friction” lends to posting different kinds of content. It’s a vibe of a high end dinner establishment vs. a quick pickup place. They have their own lanes.

mcny 2y ago
I want to piggyback to compare TikTok and YouTube. It is so much easier to post a quick fifteen second clip on TikTok on their mobile app. Compare to the same on YouTube, I feel a lot more friction. I don't know if it is justified but maybe I haven't used TikTok enough to be afraid there. For example, I learned early on that a video of a party with music playing in the background is a bad idea™ on YouTube.
edude03 2y ago
Yeah I think it comes down to two things 1) the low friction leading to more mundane things being posted 2) the norm being text content not from people you necessarily follow / people who aren’t “celebrities” so mundane relatable things tend to bubble up. I do wonder if one day video understanding LLMs will be able to understand what a photo/video is about and show you content that’s relevant to you

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

aorloff 2y ago

And when he bought it, it was

paul7986 2y ago

Yet Twitter now X is just our modern day 4chan owned by the richest man in the world. Never have ever seen such insane things (people shot point blank in the head & the gruesomeness of it) I didnt need to see (scrolling thru) and all thanks to X.

philipwhiuk 2y ago

> Nothing about this sort of interaction is baked into the protocol as far as I can tell yet FB insta snap etc don’t work this way. It's baked into the UI. Public by default. Facebook is personal by default. You post stuff on 'your feed', you view 'your friends' updates. Late in the game Facebook realised this was a problem and has tried to cram other stuff into people's feeds - viral content. And people hate it. People want their Facebook feed to be stuff from people they know and they see the other injected content (meme groups, assorted interest groups, comics, etc) as little more than extra adverts. Contrastingly Twitter was always the public firehose and so while many people do not care for it, those that do, are opting into it, not trying to opt out.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
What's amazing is it seems nobody (big/public) is trying to really make a thing which is personal as you describe. It's all twitter rip-offs, microblogging narcissistic megaphone attempts. I don't care a bit about bluesky, and while I check on my Mastodon feed a few times a week I don't interact there much either. This "look at me, whole world!" phenomenon is of very little interest to me. I despise what Meta has become, but I don't see an alternative yet to FB.
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  > What's amazing is it seems nobody (big/public) is trying to really make a thing which is personal as you describe. The problem is the monetisation of it.

_fat_santa 2y ago

> For example, say I’m in traffic on the highway. Searching 401 might in this example surface tweets from other drivers on the highway talking about traffic and/or posts about an accident they came across. The problem I have on Twitter now is that folks hijack that and post tweets about totally unrelated stuff (usually crypto). Take you example that there is a huge wreck on the 401 and you want to find out what's going on. Go on Twitter and the top post will be something like: "Get your Airdrop to $NEWCRYPTO Today. iPhone 12, 401 Crash, Cute Cats"