14 ms·

I Hope Twitter Goes Away

395 points by mwcampbell 12y ago

kylec 12y ago
For someone that supposedly quit Twitter months ago, there are a surprising number of recent tweets: https://twitter.com/Alex_Gaynor https://twitter.com/Alex_Gaynor Not to mention the big Twitter logo linking to his profile at the top of his blog.
- wonderyak 12y ago
  Maybe he just wants to engage with #Brands.
- untog 12y ago
  Well, all his Twitter account is doing is tweeting out links to his blog posts. It's a glorified RSS feed, not what he's talking about the post. But still, yeah.
  - kylec 12y ago
    Not all his posts are links to his blog: https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/524683684180271106 https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/524683684180271106 But even if they were, there's a certain irony to decrying Twitter while syndicating yourself on it.
    - smacktoward 12y ago
      Maybe, there's also something to be said for being pragmatic. You may not like the way the world is right now, but you still have to live in it, you know?
      - scrollaway 12y ago
        Except that his first words in the post are "About seven months ago, I abruptly quit Twitter.", so that's just utter BS. I may be biased because Alex Gaynor is a prominent member of the Django community and one of the pillars of what made it so elitist and hostile to contributions. But then again, I hate twitter too.
    - morganvachon 12y ago
      I can see why he would want to do that; I hate Facebook and only hold onto it for a few long distance family members, but realistically I could drop it and communicate with them via my wife's account. However, if I drop Facebook then I also drop the FB Pages associated with the websites I manage. While it's not a huge audience by any stretch, it's still important to me. In another example, recently I stopped commenting on OS News threads altogether due to the recent political shenanigans (in short, the managing editor stopped posting operating system/tech news and focused solely on the gamergate saga). However, I do still check out the site from time to time, and ironically both the stories and the subsequent discussions have improved in the past week or so while he's been on vacation. Still, I'm soured from engaging with that community for a while yet, even though I have friends there. So I can see him keeping his Twitter account and only using it to promote his blog, declining to engage in regular conversation. On the one hand, maybe it is a bit hypocritical, but on the other, he's using Twitter for exactly what he said it should be used for.
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      If you criticize the effects of cars on society, are you a hypocrite for driving? How about riding? If you critique capitalism and wish it would end, are you a hypocrite for buying? That's always a low accusation to make primarily because it's ad hominem and completely irrelevant, but secondarily because it's an easy attack that requires a detailed defense. If a person making billions from running tobacco companies doesn't smoke, prefers people he's around don't smoke, and thinks that it's a nasty habit, is he a hypocrite? What about if he makes money from a rise in sales of sugary candy but thinks people eat too much sugary candy? What if he makes money from selling housing but rents? edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8535040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8535040
      - xrange 12y ago
        Hypocrite: 1.) a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion 2.) a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings
cr3ative 12y ago
Wait, is this satire? His Twitter account is linked in the header, and it just posted about this article. He claims to want to encourage conversations, but comments are disabled. What is this?
- Flavius 12y ago
  His blog comments were probably just like Twitter conversations: impossible to follow and appearing in an inconsistent order. Thus they had to go away. Also the jokes. Stop broadcasting jokes!
- tux3 12y ago
  >He claims to want to encourage conversations He certainly does not want to encourage conversation. >Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities; It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does. That's not a community, that's an echo chamber with no disagreeing, no joking, no comments. It's okay if he doesn't like Twitter and doesn't want to use it, but wishing for it to go away makes me uncomfortable. Why should he care if others use Twitter ? I, for one, am happy with Twitter being alive even though I don't use it.
  - jsmthrowaway 12y ago
    > It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does. It's interesting that you say that, given that this is the same person who started a firestorm of drama by pull requesting gendered documentation in Node.js.
    - walterbell 12y ago
      Good to know, thanks.
    - serve_yay 12y ago
      Oh my god, everything about the discussion of this article is nuts. What are you talking about?!
negativeview 12y ago
Eh. I'm definitely a part of several communities on Twitter. It's just that they're micro-communities that are fluid in size and shape. If I'm talking business stuff I'll @shazow usually. If it's coding, usually @wolever, sometimes @shazow or @lnxprgr3, depending on the language/platform/etc. The whole hashtag thing is ... pretty hit or miss. I wouldn't mind a better solution to that. But as weak as it is, it's how I found some of my closest twitter-friends, so it can definitely work. Thankfully I haven't had to deal with any harassment issues (not famous, nor a noticeable minority), though sadly I don't doubt that they exist to some degree. And just to be snippy, I find it amusing that he's so against comments on blogs, preferring that you write your own blog post. Isn't that exactly like Twitter? Everyone has their own medium, none of which are explicitly connected...
- Tombone5 12y ago
  It's not at all exactly like twitter, for one a text that needs to stand on its own (a blog post) will require far more work to be of any sort of quality than a simple reply on twitter.
  - negativeview 12y ago
    Okay, I'll get more explicit. > I think Twitter is defined by the fact that it's about broadcast. Writing on a blog with comments off is 100% broadcast with no built-in solution for conversations to form. Twitter has a (flawed) way, so twitter is actually LESS about broadcast than this blog. > Communities are, above all else, defined by membership, the ability for people to identify as a part of one, and to participate in activities, and share things and experiences with the group. How does a reader proclaim membership in this blog. Sign up for comments? Post comments? Nope. How does a reader participate? How does a reader share their experiences with the group? Far easier on Twitter than here. > Every user floats by themselves, interacting with who they please. Every reader of the blog floats by themselves, interacting with nobody. > Try following a multi-party conversation using any of the official clients; How is THIS possible on the blog? You can email the author, sure, but you aren't going to see or be able to reply to anyone else that emailed him. There's also the widely-repeated quote of "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." Length is not necessarily indicative of amount of thought. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
JackDorsley 12y ago
Haha what a complete asshoe. Be nice if this random dude went away.
atjoslin 12y ago
Disagree. Twitter is immensely valuable for me to quickly communicate with people in my "community" (the Javascript tech world), as well as keep up on news in areas I'm interested in: the Javascript tech world & a few others.
- freebs 12y ago
  He also clearly doesn't understand how to use lists to create his own communities. I have lists for devs, friends, funnies, etc. With a little effort you can have these communities on tap in columns. Hey, if you're lazy, you can even subscribe to other's lists and put them in a column too. Twitter is not hard for conversation, so long as you can put together concise thoughts. I'll agree it does become a pain when you need to explain a lot, but that's why we have links and a multitude of platforms to record our thoughts.
GI_Josh 12y ago
I don't necessarily agree that Twitter users can't build communities. A friend of mine writes for a sports blog specific to an NFL team. His twitter account (and @replies) show that he is a part of a very strong community around the team. The tweets from these super-fans aren't just missives shouted into space, these people use Twitter almost solely as a response tool to each other. Their tweets look very much like something you'd see on IRC or a message board.
- schoen 12y ago
  I guess another way of phrasing the original article's claim is that although communities do form, they have no straightforward way to exclude strangers, interlopers, and even griefers: and except for incessant use of hashtags (which could eat up valuable space), there's no simple way for a person who is part of multiple communities to direct comments to only one community. That's a recipe for both serendipity and uncomfortable moments (or worse) if someone has strong opinions on, say, computer science, religion, and animal rights. People who chose to follow them over one thing will constantly see their opinions on other things. That might be great under some circumstances because it will promote more interesting and broader discussions or lead people to learn about ideas that they wouldn't have naturally come across in their own filter bubble. But it might produce some serious disruption in the conversation too, especially if that person's views are offensive or upsetting to some readers. I know a Twitter user writes a lot about computer science and a lot about sex and sexuality. I find both sets of posts frequently insightful, but the latter would be off-topic in a forum devoted only to computer science, and they do sometimes produce offense. It seems like the best case for avoiding really bad forms of conflict is when a group of people tweet almost exclusively on a single topic that outsiders don't find upsetting or offensive (or simply don't know about). But a lot of people do want to have at least some discussions that others will inevitably be offended by, and the broadcast medium can be a challenge for that if you didn't want to get into it with the strangers (or for that matter have some of them insult you, threaten you, or even dox you).
  - schoen 12y ago
    An example: I remember a blog written by an Orthodox Jew on theology and also cultural and political issues within the Orthodox community. Periodically commenters would come by who would take exception to gender relations in the Orthodox world, or to the idea that there is a God who created the world and revealed his will to the Jewish people, who are uniquely continuing to follow it. The author would ban these commenters. His theory was that people are entitled to debate those topics somewhere, but that he wanted to have productive discussions on his blog with people who shared his basic premises. It's easy for me see two different points of view about this: that it creates a "filter bubble" of the sort described by Eli Pariser, where the Orthodox (and people with other beliefs, for that matter, in their own blog communities) never see their faith questioned, and have a subjective experience that their beliefs are "normal" and don't hear about the substance of criticisms or objections to them. Or that it actually allows discussions about the topics that the audience of that blog mainly wants to discuss, without having every single thread turn into a debate about the existence of God, whether the Torah is divine, and whether Orthodoxy should adopt gender egalitarianism. I think one idea here is that Twitter only makes one of these two options practical: the one where every thread can conceivably go off in the direction of a bunch of strangers saying that your basic beliefs are wrong (or even that you are a bad person).
jonstokes 12y ago
I totally agree with this guy. At least, I mostly do. I'm not sure if I care if it goes away, but I've drastically cut back on my use of it mainly for the reasons he outlines. I think he's onto something.
vonklaus 12y ago
I am not a huge twitter fan. I watched the http://foundation.bz/ http://foundation.bz/ interview with Biz Stone, and he seems like he has integrity. I think some of the management of twitter is a bit dubious, but the core function of the application is rather valuable. It is a good way to keep track of people & events. It makes it easy to broadcast things like occupy, arabspring, ebola, charities, entrepreneurs, etc. It is a good way for people to collectively contribute ideas such as news. It isn't really meant to be a social network. What the author purports to be a bug, is actually like the key usecase/feature of twitter. I don't regularly use it, and am pretty ambivalent, but I understand the value.
AYBABTME 12y ago
Alright, so twitter is terrible because its 'broadcast' instead of 'communities', and you don't like 'broadcast' but you like 'communities', so twitter should go away. a) "I hope Twitter genuinely ceases to be." b) "I want a product that enables me to build and participate in communities[...]." Having a product that enables b) doesn't mean a) must happen. Why come to that conclusion. Because you don't like participating in it, it should cease to be? I don't get how people come to conclusions like this. It feels very self absorbed to conclude a) from b). Maybe I'm just allergic to opinion pieces with hyperbolic titles.
- baddox 12y ago
  I suspect a) is more a response to his perception that Twitter is unique in the large amount of harassment it hosts.
- smacktoward 12y ago
  I don't want to speak for the author, but an argument could be made that a product that: 1) Is massively popular; and 2) Has design flaws that actively sabotage conversation ... could lead to a situation where "B would be better if A went away," due to network effects. No matter how good an alternative B you build, people will keep on suffering with A despite its limitations, because that's where all the other people are. The existence of A sucks away oxygen that B needs to grow.
  - Eiriksmal 12y ago
    Exactly. Shotgun-blast your puerile thoughts to your dozens/hundreds/millions of followers. Don't bother reading any responses it might garner—they're going to be just as base. Now you're in the habit of just shotgunning statements into the crowd, so when you do the same thing on Facebook, you've forgotten how to engage in a more lengthy, rational discussion. Or, even worse, you've grown up with Twitter and don't understand that people can have lengthy, meaningful conversations via the internet.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
TrainedMonkey 12y ago
This too will pass.
jusuchin 12y ago
Completely disagree... what a selfish post.
penprog 12y ago
How about if you want a safe place you don't go to unsafe places? It's that simple. You can choose what you read.
- jshevek 12y ago
  But then you might accidentally find yourself in an unsafe space one day. Its better to convert enough people to your opinions about safe spaces, and eventually force the world to conform to your vision.
cheshire137 12y ago
Man, this dude's crotchety. "Stop liking things I don't like!"
- serve_yay 12y ago
  And twitter users doing their part in turn by getting upset someone doesn't like what they like ;)
- mrweasel 12y ago
  I can't disagree with you, even if I really want to. I'm the same way, I want people to stop using Twitter, because I don't want to use it. I went to dotgo this month, much of the last minute communication was on Twitter, which is a really annoying platform to navigate when you don't have an account. I want to get other people of the platforms that I don't use, so I'm not forced to deal with them myself. Being push towards technologies, behaviors and trends you don't like can be extremely frustrating. In the end me being bitter about Twitter, JavaScript, smartphones, tablets and all the other stuff I really don't care about isn't going to change public opinion. I comfort myself in the fact that Twitter will be dead soon if they continue to lose money.
  - eclipxe 12y ago
    >me being bitter about Twitter, JavaScript, smartphones, tablets and all the other stuff I really don't care about Can you elaborate why you are bitter about the above?
    - BuckRogers 12y ago
      Well, for Javascript it's obvious. Not sure about the rest.
      - eclipxe 12y ago
        Well played :-)
jordanpg 12y ago
I suspect Mr Gaynor is tapping into a simmering feeling that many have that Twitter is inadequate for most communication needs (at least among technical crowds), and that there are now many, many more interesting alternatives now. He clearly cares a lot about his #Brand and being the among first person to say how uncool Twitter or FB or MySpace is becoming might very well boost his Klout score. I agree that Twitter is inadequate for serious communications and is the last place I go to read deeply on anything, but that doesn't mean it's not immensely useful and fun to many others outside my communities. I don't usually find myself hoping that things I don't use "cease to be". I think Gaynor must just be addressing his own social circles here and speaking hyperbolically.
notastartup 12y ago
His wish might just come true. Investors are also wary of twitter and it's ability to monetize. The huge userbase alone won't work forever. The end game for twitter will look in the shape and form of a buyout at a huge discount by an already hugely profitable company.
mbesto 12y ago
Slightly side topic - does anyone else feel like they "need" to use Twitter because it's a good distribution platform (the "human RSS"), but generally don't particularly enjoy it? I personally find myself thinking "oh maybe I should post that stupid comment that's in my head on Twitter...last time I did it I got X followers, so I should probably continue to do it"
- baby 12y ago
  yup. I'm worse than the author here, I've never understood twitter. It's bad for writing because of the limitation, it's bad to keep track of something because of all the noise, it's bad for discussions, it's bad for communities, etc... The only good things that I can come up with are: broadcasting, stalking someone, press 2.0. And yes I do use it, I have a twitter account with 600+ followers (I don't even know if they're called followers) and I just use it to promote and promote, and I dislike it so much that I miss on a lot of promotion by ignoring it most of the time.
  - mcantelon 12y ago
    >it's bad for communities I'd say it's good for sharing intel within communities, just not for in-depth discussion (other sites are good for that).
diydsp 12y ago
Twitter is an example of product design by technical limitations, not what people need. Nevertheless, they hit very well, b/c the two were somewhat closely aligned for a decade or so. Now that it's being strained, some of its limitations are showing... ...But no matter what, I do not predict its imminent demise... Especially since they are mainly a technical layer, there is still a world of protocols they can implement on top of it to make it more like e.g. IRC, or whatever other comm. network people desire. Then again CB radio rose and fell quite hard without ever completely going away.
smacktoward 12y ago
If you want a more detailed critique of Twitter's design and the effect it has on conversations there, I wrote one last year: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/ http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/ /end self-promotion
- fuzzywalrus 12y ago
  I agree, this is more of an eloquent critique. Also this reads as "this is why I don't like twitter" instead of "stop liking things I don't".
api 12y ago
That's what I like about Twitter-- it's a global cocktail party. People tweet to one another about anything regardless of whether they know each other or what their relative socioeconomic background is. It is what it is. It's not for everyone. But the net is more interesting with it than without it.
firstaccount 12y ago
The communities of twitter are #hashtags.
gdulli 12y ago
It's kind of ridiculous and solipsistic to declare that something that exists for a purpose you don't care about shouldn't exist at all. I prefer Twitter to other social networks and haven't had any problems with it. (Though Twitter should improve the situation for people who do get harassed. You can't eliminate all anonymity on the internet.) I'm also not interested in the shallow/faux "communities" that are more easily facilitated by Facebook but I have no problem with allowing it to exist and I can't imagine censoring it as a whole due to the parts I don't like. Or even writing up a blog post about doing so.
kefka 12y ago
I'm another person who doesn't use Twitter, however I do have an account. And frankly, I fail to see many use cases. But I also acknowledge that the few use cases are powerful. 1. On the ground reporting 2. Messages to group of friends, like where to meet 3. Coordinating group efforts outside friends list in X social media 4. Warnings related to specific area/time 5. Error logs related to web services 6. Command/Control of hidden machines 7. Complaints to companies with sensitive web presence
vhost- 12y ago
>About seven months ago, I abruptly quit Twitter. Though I'd been thinking about it for a while, ultimately leaving was a snap decision for me. Lately I've been reflecting on why I hate Twitter so much. It took me a minute to figure out he never worked for Twitter and that he just quit _using_ Twitter.
todayiscrown 12y ago
I'm confused. His opening says >>> About seven months ago, I abruptly quit Twitter. And this is his twitter >>> http://imgur.com/xAyW4h1 http://imgur.com/xAyW4h1 Last I checked oct 21st's not "seven months ago" What gives?
- lnanek2 12y ago
  Could just be automatic posting from his blogging clients.
ehosca 12y ago
weirdo
tptacek 12y ago
I value communities too, but the open broadcast nature of Twitter is what I like about it: I can put a message out into the either ("sector-level FDE encryption is bad!" or "ChiSec is next Wednesday") and it quickly percolates to people who (a) I'm glad saw it and (b) I would not have known to send it to. Lots of good things have come from that dynamic. Twitter is full of abuse and harassment. Other communities are, too. One solution to that problem is policing, which is what HN does. Another is (for lack of a better term) cliquishness, which is what closed communities do. I see a lot of value in both of those approaches too, but every community management strategy has tradeoffs, and serendipity is an awfully powerful force to trade for orderliness.
- _asummers 12y ago
  OT, I didn't know about ChiSec, so thanks for that. I'm going to try and come to the next meetup.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Neato. It's 2 weeks from now. http://sockpuppet.org/chisec http://sockpuppet.org/chisec. We're going to put together something similar for HN-types.
programmarchy 12y ago
I always thought of twitter as a news filtering service. At least, that's how I use it. I follow people who tweet about things that I'm interested in. Journalism is about 'broadcast', not 'communities'. Should it go away, too?
mcantelon 12y ago
>It's fundamentally impossible to create a safe space with a public account Right, so use something else for that. Twitter grew because it's open. I interpret posts like this as an attempt to lobby for the creation of a caste within Twitter with the ability to censor. I've abandoned other large sites because of unreasonable censorship. EDIT: Gaynor thinks people shouldn't use HN too. Quel surprise. https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/259803468838080512 https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/259803468838080512
throwaway5752 12y ago
Is this some kind of joke? It has a Twitter icon on his website that links to his active Twitter account. On that account, 4 hours ago, he tweeted about this blog post (https://twitter.com/Alex_Gaynor https://twitter.com/Alex_Gaynor, https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/527851651097309184 https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/527851651097309184)
bartwe 12y ago
I'm surprised at seeing no reference to reddit which does allow for participation and discussion.
- jshevek 12y ago
  Reddit makes it much harder for you to completely shelter yourself from people who disagree with you (compared to, say, facebook). Some of the content of his post strongly suggests that he defines 'community' by his ability to block people he doesn't like or agree with.
_random_ 12y ago
Plus all good names are taken and there is no strategy for recycling unused ones - simply embarrassing.
habosa 12y ago
Ok this may seem crazy, but check out Google+ again. It is a really nice mix of broadcast and communities (when you can find a good community). It won't replace your FB or your Twitter, but it seems to have a solution to this one niche. It has the directed-edge-graph of Twitter and also really strong support for communities and pages. I know a lot of the developer communities on there are really strong (I work on Developer Relations at Google so I see it all the time).
lk145 12y ago
If discussions > broadcast then why disable comments?
- jshevek 12y ago
  He doesn't want discussions with people he doesn't agree with.
programminggeek 12y ago
Twitter won't go away for say 50-100 years. Why? There is value in the name/idea in the public consciousness. Let's not forget that myspace, friendster, and livejournal still exist. There are a lot of pre 2000 sites and brands that are still sort of a live in some kind of zombie state or another. It's weird.
- nullc 12y ago
  Myspace has no impact on my life... Thats "close enough" to gone for my purposes, and I assume the author's as well. I don't mine if there are people going around using tools that I don't care for, it's only when they're insanely popular beyond all cause do they exert social pressure on people who would prefer to not use them.
cloudwizard 12y ago
I am annoyed when people ask me for a twitter id to register. My twitter accounts are just for testing. I think there is a use for twitter as a generator for random number seeds
tg3 12y ago
Isn't blogging a form of "broadcast"? Twitter was a originally a "micro-blogging" service after all. I don't necessarily disagree with his point about the levels of abuse on Twitter, but the medium with which he is expressing his message (his blog) seems to disprove his point. Why do blog posts seem to be (mostly) free of these levels of abuse, while they're so rampant on Twitter?
serve_yay 12y ago
I quit it about a month ago. But I seriously, seriously doubt it is going anywhere.
getdavidhiggins 12y ago
https://quitter.se/ https://alpha.app.net/ http://sublevel.net/ https://cupcake.io/ https://ello.co/ ..the internet is made of choice
- mrweasel 12y ago
  Which sort of fails if 99% pick something different from you, or you don't want to pick.
  - getdavidhiggins 12y ago
    I see what you're saying - but for the 1% that are influencers (who share and curate web content) - there is a strategy called POSSE http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) Basically a lot of people have their own independent rig, and then spam out the link to the silos, while at the same time, operating 5-7 social media accounts where they engage with the feedback on those silos (app.net/ello, etc) We all know these 'web personalities' - the Grubers, Anil Dashes, Marcos, and even the Gaynors
ChuckMcM 12y ago
This line stood out for me, "Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities; unless they do something so bad as to actually get banned from Twitter" I've heard this several times from people with large followers, basically that they can't escape the bad actors without taking their account private. I don't think this is a Twitter issue so much as it is a everyone-on-the-network-has-the-same-volume issue. In the 'real' world, the relative population sizes of trolls vs non-trolls means that trolls get drowned out by the noise. But on the Internet everyone gets the same level of 'voice' and a minority can drown out the majority, especially if they are willing to be antisocial about it. It is a hard problem. A naturally troll resistant but otherwise frictionless sharing platform. Maybe a voting button on every tweet, that is 'troll factor' (so +1 if they are a troll, -1 if they aren't) then use some data analytics to marginalize trolls. Seems like fertile ground for some fresh thinking.
- Kalium 12y ago
  The catch is that once you introduce marginalization mechanisms, abuse is inevitable. What people often want is some kind of abuse-proof marginalize-only-the-people-I-don't-like button.
tbatterii 12y ago
ironically one of the reasons i've entertained the idea of quitting twitter is b/c of annoying things that showed up in my feed from the author(and others). But I just un-followed him instead. the technical things I'm interested in, but I dont care for the politics so much.
roymckenzie 12y ago
sanctimonious bloviating He is criticizing Twitter for being something it isn't. It's a shame this made it to the front page of ycombinator news.
ben336 12y ago
Twitter is the best real time news source I've ever seen. Any discussion of it's utility that ignores that is missing how a huge percentage of its users actually interact with it. Yes its bad for conversations. Yes it is poor at building communities. But if you want to know whats happening in <insert area of interest here> Twitter can be a fantastic resource. Especially (but not exclusively) if your area of interest involves sports, tech, or politics.
- vuldin 12y ago
  Ahh, real time news! Yes I think that is the one biggest positive feature of twitter. When I was trying to remember some positive things about Twitter to respond to this with, I failed to remember this one due to all the other not-as-positive things Twitter is used for.
  - prottmann 12y ago
    And that things are?
waylandsmithers 12y ago
Well, they don't make any money, so...
no_future 12y ago
Why is everyone so into Twitter? I've never actually met someone who tweeted.
fogleman 12y ago
Step 1: disable your own Twitter account.
fat0wl 12y ago
haven't we always known that twitter is just an anechoic chamber to stick narcissists in? i guess its alright for comedians/intellectuals to post amusing stuff (even then I find the tweet value to be inconsistent enough that its not worth scrolling through their history). outside that isnt it mainly a platform for egotists & social climbers to add to their self-importance? i like it cuz it kinda tires them out, maybe stops them from taking to the streets to act like hot shit -- and i never have to look at it :)
- naiyt 12y ago
  > haven't we always known that twitter is just an anechoic chamber to stick narcissists in? That's an incredibly broad generalization of ~300 million users.
gojomo 12y ago
Conversations work on Twitter if the participants share enough context, such as similar vocabularies or compatible high-level goals. Unfortunately the system and its harsh constraints is also really good at matching up people sure to misunderstand each other. I suspect, though, that a lot of recent angst is transient, due to the inrush of users with wildly different rhetorical standards, and the exciting novelty, including the excitement of discord and performative moralizing. But the novelty of nasty arguments with strangers will wear off – like how Farmville and similar games become less interesting when their basic mechanics and repetitive loops are understood. The true utility of Twitter will persist, leaving us with a better ratio of light-to-heat than some are experiencing at the moment.
golemotron 12y ago
> Twitter has no mechanisms for this. Every user floats by themselves, interacting with who they please. This denies us the ability to build communities, to set social norms, and to enforce them. Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities I read this and said "oh, he wants to censor people." Then, I got to the bottom of the post and saw that he doesn't allow comments either. It was a one, two punch.
hippowithgas 12y ago
I actually hope Twitter doesn't go away, it can serve as a fly-paper for the short-attention-span conversionist. The sort of people who talk at you, rather than with you. If they are all there, we can sneak off, to the other party, enjoy conversation, with give and take, learn, laugh, cry, take a real interest. It may even run to more than 140 chars. It will be great!
namank 12y ago
Broadcast has it's own use. I posit that broadcast leads to a more organic formation of a community since it ensures that communities are emergent rather than prescribed. Thousands of communities come into being and dissolve on twitter every single day - what, really, is the hashtag? People within an "idea proximity" (nearness of two ideas:)) commune about ideas with a gusto lost in other social sites. Twitter is one of the greatest communication gifts of this century.
squar1sm 12y ago
Yeah it's weird he still has a twitter account but I completely agree with him. Especially when I try to engage in a meaningful conversation. It's like excusing yourself from a loud party to talk to someone about something deep or complicated. Twitter is a party.
abhididdigi 12y ago
Lots of Negativity here again. Most of the commenter here are saying it is wrong when he says Twitter should die because it doesn't encourage good communication, and then blocks his own comments section. It just means he wants to have a meaningful communication. He says, you can email him, or write your own blog post to refute or add on to what he says. That way you will be facilitating a great communication.
- adnzzzzZ 12y ago
  >It just means he wants to have a meaningful communication. If you want to communicate you don't create barriers for it to happen. There's nothing inherent to comment systems that prevents people from writing meaningful comments.
- jshevek 12y ago
  Yes, there is a lot of negativity here. Do you really think that its based on a misunderstanding of his post? Maybe the negativity is a result of people understanding his post, and having different - arguably better - values than he does.
gameshot911 12y ago
How to make Twitter go away: Stop talking about it, writing about it, using it, thinking about it. How not to make Twitter go away: Write blog articles about how you want Twitter to go away, which are then shared and posted across the Internet.
- freyr 12y ago
  * then shared and posted across the Internet. * On Twitter, specifically. He tweeted his article about not using Twitter. Maybe he just wants people to engage with the @alex_gaynor #Brand.
spullara 12y ago
Just make your account protected.
stealthlogic 12y ago
You and me both, Alex.
paulannesley 12y ago
I completely disagree. > Twitter is good for two things: engaging with #Brands, and broadcasting messages to whoever wants to read them. I almost never engage with brands on Twitter. I do broadcast messages — to anybody who has chosen to follow me and hasn't chosen to unfollow me, both of which are freely done without any social consequences. On the flip side, I read that which others have broadcast, provided I follow them. And I'm free to shape exactly who's in that set of people, without worrying about circles or unfriending or which IRC channels to sit in. The author writes about communities, and about moderating IRC channels and making decisions about who can stay and who is banned. Perhaps he prefers to shape and steer communities in a way that Twitter doesn't facilitate. Personally, the ephemeral and asymmetric nature of the Twitter social graph is the defining feature. The 140 character limit is perhaps just a constraint which helped that feature survive. The author also mentioned harassment on Twitter. I've never been on the receiving end of it, and I hope I've never been on the other end either. But I believe it's a real problem. I hope there's a solution, but “Twitter going away” isn't that solution.
Emphaticdotco 12y ago
There's a Dutch saying that roughly translates to: "Life is a party but you've got to hang your own balloons." Twitter can be a fantastic place for community if you know where to look or are willing to organize it yourself. Tweetchats are a great example of this [1], the phenomenon known as "Black Twitter" [2] is another. (Although many ostensible members of "Black Twitter" have legitimate issues with how "it" is being studied and reported.)[3] Not to mention the ad hoc communities that spring up around events and pop culture happenings. As with many other things, it might just be a matter of what one makes it. [1]http://janetfouts.com/how-to-participate-in-a-tweet-chat/ http://janetfouts.com/how-to-participate-in-a-tweet-chat/ [2] http://www.annenberglab.com/projects/dsail-black-twitter-project http://www.annenberglab.com/projects/dsail-black-twitter-pro... [3]http://io9.com/what-happens-when-scientists-study-black-twitter-1630540515 http://io9.com/what-happens-when-scientists-study-black-twit...
basher 12y ago
Why I agree with article Emailed link to me from twitter redirected to http://imgur.com/uazq6A9 http://imgur.com/uazq6A9 http://i.imgur.com/uazq6A9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/uazq6A9.jpg Summary a big slot is dedicated to Westboro Baptists hate tweet. This was labelled news. In what universe is it ok to have direct tweets from WBC promoted as news content. Free speech is one thing promoting hate speech is another - big fail twitter.
IvyMike 12y ago
"This hammer isn't a very good screwdriver."
- metaphorm 12y ago
  I don't think that was Gaynor's point. I think he was saying something more like "this hammer is so popular nobody is using screwdrivers anymore, but we still need screwdrivers."
hoggle 12y ago
Twitter like Apple define themselves more by saying "No" then anything else and I love them for it.
arh68 12y ago
I acknowledge the irony of 'no comments' on this blog post but beneath that there is a point. All communication is broadcast. What differs is how those broadcasts are released and revisited through time. Twitter emphasizes the recent, most piecemeal events. Not building upon previous works, just consuming content FIFO and shouting back into the ether. Noise. An old blog post has more potential, more signal-to-noise, than an old tweet. Wikipedia is an interesting result of [anonymous] editors broadcasting content towards each other in a very constructive manner. Some termites might just stack dirt, but others can use simple methods to construct complex creations.
enkitosh 12y ago
I don't understand. You can build lists, I do and they are followed by other people. I have one list of Icelanders and I totally look at that list as a community of people. Just take Snoop dogg's account for example, he has a massive amount of followers. Is this not the community of Snoop dogg fans? You can find other Snoop dogg fans and follow them and interact with them if they are doing something that you like. I love how I can just go on twitter and there is @BettyFckinWhite going "You know who doesn't care that it's #NationalCatDay? Every cat." and I go "hah, that's hilarious" and then I go do something else. I think social media that aims at being everything you need on one site is robbing to much of our time. Twitter keeps it snappy, yet I can interact as much as I want.
- electronous 12y ago
  I, too, am a man in his early twenties. Good shit.
- enkitosh 12y ago
  Wait. He has a link to his twitter account in the header of the blog. What is the last tweet? 9 hours ago, a link to this article. He hopes that twitter will go away yet he uses it constantly? I'm confused to say the least. I don't know what this man wants!
  - gurkendoktor 12y ago
    Of course you can use a service because it's too mainstream to avoid, and at the same time wish that it didn't exist. I've also signed up for Twitter because they stopped providing RSS feeds. That doesn't mean I wish them best.
Oblouk 12y ago
Twitters open API is very useful. Even if it doesn't allow you to get more than 1% of the tweets (without subscribing to firehouse and paying lots of $$$) it is very useful for many different projects of mine.
rantanplan 12y ago
Oh the irony! I stopped using twitter mainly because of Alex and other similar figures in the python community. I quickly found out that twitter(or maybe the social media in general) brings the worst in people. I was following people because of their status in the software community and I hoped that I might get informed about tech stuff directly "from the source". Instead, what I got were stupid jokes, rallies against "hostile" people that used "he" instead of "she" (oh the horror!) and other political nonsense. I put up with the brain farts of people I used to admire only for a few months. I then decided that twitter probably isn't for me.
krick 12y ago
I cannot understand why this thread seems to be so popular. I'm not sure if I ever heard of this Alex Gaynor before (although he seems to have some recognition, but not really much), this article explains to some degree why he hates twitter, not why twitter is harmful for the universe and as stated in the comments many times already there isn't much constructive critique in his reasoning. So, essentially it is simply "somebody wrote he doesn't like something" post and would be of interest only if this "somebody" is some really special person. Can somebody explain?
philwelch 12y ago
Honestly, @RealTimeWWII and its companion and imitator accounts (like @GuadaBattle) are, to me, the main justification of Twitter as a platform. If I didn't follow those accounts (and I will probably stop in three years once they finish) I wouldn't have hardly any use for Twitter.
mkr-hn 12y ago
The author has obviously never seen furry Twitter. One of my favorite communities. Maybe it helps that most people make a fresh account for it. It's diverse, safe, full of conversation, and seems to make a lot of people happy.
kakakiki 12y ago
Twitter is definitely not for everyone. It is definitely not for me. I don't want it to go away. I see people, communities achieving a lot with it - it is a medium to get heard.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rpm33 12y ago
Twitter is an incredible medium for citizen journalism and news broadcasting in general. There is no doubt about that. It does have issues with tackling bots and fake profiles - something that it finds harder than other social networks like Facebook which have a better system in place for authenticating accounts. By subscribing to the right people on Twitter, my feed is highly curated to suit my interests. Their machine learning would only get better and I only wish they use the AI it to classify bots and other fake accounts to enhance user experience.
vuldin 12y ago
Thanks for posting this, I have had the same unpopular opinion since Twitter first appeared. While I don't necessarily think that Twitter should go away, I do think it should get out of the way of other methods for communication. There are much better forms of communication for many circumstances where communication is needed. Which is damn near everything aside from communicating with marketers and expressing witty one-liners to the world. EDIT: I forgot about one great thing about twitter that I normally don't think about (since all the other uses cloud this function for me): real-time news. There's not many tools out there that can handle this type of functionality better. Reddit serves the same purpose for many people and does so in an even better way in my opinion (no character limit, communities focused on a topic, etc.).
puredemo 12y ago
Says the guy with nearly 38k tweets.
casebash 12y ago
I hate Twitter as well. It is occupying a place that could very easily be occupied by much better products. It's primary purpose is to hold back innovation. I'm sure some people prefer Twitter as it is and it is valid for them to do so. However, the existence of Twitter is still massively harmful in terms of opportunity cost.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  I am not sure on your conclusions. I do not use Twitter (I have an account, only scammers and spammers follow me, I say nothing interesting on it) but if there could be much better products, they'd take the position of Twitter, wouldn't they? Twitter's primary purpose is to allow shouting in the street, not to hold back innovation. How is Twitter's existence stopping you from innovating?
drawkbox 12y ago
Twitter still rules the real-time news/information area. Communities like facebook/irc/forums are too closed for broadcasts like that. It has its purpose and it does it well. But you can also not use products you don't like. I suspect some Twitter hate as he spent time very close to it in working there. This is expected, you work on a product you might see more of the bad than the good. Game developers don't always enjoy the game because they see what they had to cut, directors can't watch a movie without pointing out flaws, security forces can't walk into a building without checking for safety, or you worked at Olive Garden and might never want that ever, ever again. When you work in it, you really get to know something, for better or worse.
toyg 12y ago
Alex Gaynor can be a bit of a troll. This time he wrote a blog post about things he (allegedly) doesn't like about Twitter, added a couple of "flammable" statements here and there to clickbait, and meanwhile he still has a Twitter account. It's not the first time he acts like this, regardless of his technical contributions. This is why I don't follow him and will keep discounting everything he says, sorry; he goes in the same bucket as Dave Winer and Eric Raymond, people who can code but whose overall opinions I really don't care for.
galfarragem 12y ago
I hope twitter doesn't go away. I was a very late adopter of Twitter because I always thought that Twitter and Facebook were the same. They are not. Twitter is slowly replacing my RSS and news reader. Twitter is not a community thing, it's about broadcasting (in real-time, if you need it, most people don't, they are just addicted). I don't tweet and I'm just following 11 people. I don't follow friends, I just follow who has something to broadcast. Twitter is great for that. Facebook is more noisy by concept. Their focus in communities and friends makes broadcasting side noisy. I had to turn off almost all my friends wall notifications, I don't have the time or will to read that one friend that I meet once a year went to the restaurant or played a game. It's just too much noise. That's why FB for me is nowadays mostly a chat/email friends app. FB is great for that once most people are there. (Not to be confused with: FB is great doing that..)
start123 12y ago
Twitter was never meant to be a social network. The author himself writes: "Twitter is good for two things: engaging with #Brands, and broadcasting messages", which is what Twitter is good at - a broadcast and a news consumption service. I don't see any other service that tracks realtime events as good as Twitter.
Avalaxy 12y ago
Twitter is awesome! It's so easy to use Twitter to connect with people you usually can't connect with because you have no way of reaching them. I use twitter a lot to find clients, support (e.g. I need someone from Google or Microsoft to help me with an issue), and much more. It's also a great way for me to gather news and updates. I follow the account of most of the tech I work with so I'm always up-to-date with their latest updates.
- edraferi 12y ago
  I agree that this is Twitter's best feature. It's very easy to find and reach out to almost any person or organization. It's easier than looking up a phone number, because you don't need to search through piles of "contact us" pages. It's also lighter and less cumbersome than email. I just wish it was easier to send private messages. Often I don't want my customer support communications to be massively public.
vittore 12y ago
I think some people will quit fb/twitter the same way they quit smoking or drinking. Hi there, I am recovering twiterian
davemel37 12y ago
By this authors definition, a community's primary function is to exclude others. While you are free to exclude whoever you want in your own life, it says something about you when you have a problem with others wanting to include the rest of the world. Whether you or anyone else likes it or not, we are in a time where we need to learn to adapt and include, not hide and exclude.
- freehunter 12y ago
  I don't want to talk to everyone, or listen to everyone. That's a simple fact of life, almost everyone can agree to that. I don't want to make an inside joke to the world, I only want my social group to hear it. The world might be confused or not find the joke funny, but my group would. Likewise, I don't want to see someone else's life displayed in front of me, because frankly I don't care about that other person. Life is too short to try to pretend to be interested in uninteresting people.
conradfr 12y ago
I dislike Twitter because so many people try to be clever, or think everything roaming through their mind is of interest to the world, and sadly because of retweets you can't 100% avoid them. But what I hate the most is useless articles filled with random twitter posts. It's the new and lazier street interview and it's as stupid as those "X number of people started a petition / created a facebook group about [random outrage of the day]". Twitter is OK to know when something is down, or when your favorite artist has a new album but it has weakened journalism.
cenhyperion 12y ago
How is this not a false dichotomy? The author presents it as "We can either have IRC communities and Facebook groups where everyone agrees with each other all the time or gets banned or we can have an uncontrolled twitter where people might disagree with me in ways I can't control" Both have existed very comfortably for a significant amount of time. I think (along with hundreds of millions of other users) that there's a lot of value behind a broadcast platform like twitter, and I've made some really important connections on it. It seems arrogant to dismiss that because it doesn't enable the exact types of communication the author wants to have (that are addressed by the other platforms he explicitly mentions). This is a clickbait article headline for the author's blog to get more attention, if he felt this strongly about communities, conversations, and against twitter he wouldn't disable comments, and tweet about the article. "This screwdriver is so bad at putting nails in the wall!! We should get rid of screwdrivers!"
dheera 12y ago
Weibo (the Chinese "clone" of Twitter) actually does a lot better job with conversations. It has its own built-in instant messenger, as well as a comment dialogue interface similar to what you see on Facebook. Also, you can add your own text to the top when you retweet. Nevertheless, though, I don't agree with the author's stance of "I hope Twitter goes away". If you don't like something, don't use it. Let the market decide what should exist, let hackers keep building better products, and let the market decide again.
jpindar 12y ago
Drinks from firehose. Complains about getting wet.
nimaMehanian 12y ago
You make excellent points. Twitter IS for broadcasting. It is the counterpart to community interaction. Say, you want to reach those who aren't in your community. That would be difficult on Facebook. In fact, it's a "uniquely defining feature" of Facebook not to facilitate that sort of usage. They both have a purpose. Say, a startup needs to communicate app status to its users so people aren't left hanging in mystery during a downtime. Twitter would help with that well. Maybe Twitter IS inherently less warm and more chaotic. I get that feeling too. (I don't even log-in often.) But I sort of use it to create a pseudo-community. Here me out. 140 characters are limiting, right? That means that the author of a post has two options: risk losing followers by posting chatter, OR make sure each word matters so that it's a saturated snap-shot of their current thought. Now, imagine that you follow a curated list of influencers (i.e., people that are involved-in and doing things you also are passionate about). THEY may not all know about each other, but YOU know about all them. (Think: one-to-many instead of many-to-many.) As a consequence of this, you're continually getting an influx of musings by people you respect and value the opinions of.
- nimaMehanian 12y ago
  Hear

395 points by mwcampbell 12y ago

kylec 12y ago

For someone that supposedly quit Twitter months ago, there are a surprising number of recent tweets: https://twitter.com/Alex_Gaynor https://twitter.com/Alex_Gaynor Not to mention the big Twitter logo linking to his profile at the top of his blog.

wonderyak 12y ago
Maybe he just wants to engage with #Brands.
untog 12y ago
Well, all his Twitter account is doing is tweeting out links to his blog posts. It's a glorified RSS feed, not what he's talking about the post. But still, yeah.
- kylec 12y ago
  Not all his posts are links to his blog: https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/524683684180271106 https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/524683684180271106 But even if they were, there's a certain irony to decrying Twitter while syndicating yourself on it.
  - smacktoward 12y ago
    Maybe, there's also something to be said for being pragmatic. You may not like the way the world is right now, but you still have to live in it, you know?
    - scrollaway 12y ago
      Except that his first words in the post are "About seven months ago, I abruptly quit Twitter.", so that's just utter BS. I may be biased because Alex Gaynor is a prominent member of the Django community and one of the pillars of what made it so elitist and hostile to contributions. But then again, I hate twitter too.
  - morganvachon 12y ago
    I can see why he would want to do that; I hate Facebook and only hold onto it for a few long distance family members, but realistically I could drop it and communicate with them via my wife's account. However, if I drop Facebook then I also drop the FB Pages associated with the websites I manage. While it's not a huge audience by any stretch, it's still important to me. In another example, recently I stopped commenting on OS News threads altogether due to the recent political shenanigans (in short, the managing editor stopped posting operating system/tech news and focused solely on the gamergate saga). However, I do still check out the site from time to time, and ironically both the stories and the subsequent discussions have improved in the past week or so while he's been on vacation. Still, I'm soured from engaging with that community for a while yet, even though I have friends there. So I can see him keeping his Twitter account and only using it to promote his blog, declining to engage in regular conversation. On the one hand, maybe it is a bit hypocritical, but on the other, he's using Twitter for exactly what he said it should be used for.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    If you criticize the effects of cars on society, are you a hypocrite for driving? How about riding? If you critique capitalism and wish it would end, are you a hypocrite for buying? That's always a low accusation to make primarily because it's ad hominem and completely irrelevant, but secondarily because it's an easy attack that requires a detailed defense. If a person making billions from running tobacco companies doesn't smoke, prefers people he's around don't smoke, and thinks that it's a nasty habit, is he a hypocrite? What about if he makes money from a rise in sales of sugary candy but thinks people eat too much sugary candy? What if he makes money from selling housing but rents? edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8535040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8535040
    - xrange 12y ago
      Hypocrite: 1.) a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion 2.) a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

cr3ative 12y ago

Wait, is this satire? His Twitter account is linked in the header, and it just posted about this article. He claims to want to encourage conversations, but comments are disabled. What is this?

Flavius 12y ago
His blog comments were probably just like Twitter conversations: impossible to follow and appearing in an inconsistent order. Thus they had to go away. Also the jokes. Stop broadcasting jokes!
tux3 12y ago
>He claims to want to encourage conversations He certainly does not want to encourage conversation. >Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities; It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does. That's not a community, that's an echo chamber with no disagreeing, no joking, no comments. It's okay if he doesn't like Twitter and doesn't want to use it, but wishing for it to go away makes me uncomfortable. Why should he care if others use Twitter ? I, for one, am happy with Twitter being alive even though I don't use it.
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  > It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does. It's interesting that you say that, given that this is the same person who started a firestorm of drama by pull requesting gendered documentation in Node.js.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    Good to know, thanks.
  - serve_yay 12y ago
    Oh my god, everything about the discussion of this article is nuts. What are you talking about?!

negativeview 12y ago

Eh. I'm definitely a part of several communities on Twitter. It's just that they're micro-communities that are fluid in size and shape. If I'm talking business stuff I'll @shazow usually. If it's coding, usually @wolever, sometimes @shazow or @lnxprgr3, depending on the language/platform/etc. The whole hashtag thing is ... pretty hit or miss. I wouldn't mind a better solution to that. But as weak as it is, it's how I found some of my closest twitter-friends, so it can definitely work. Thankfully I haven't had to deal with any harassment issues (not famous, nor a noticeable minority), though sadly I don't doubt that they exist to some degree. And just to be snippy, I find it amusing that he's so against comments on blogs, preferring that you write your own blog post. Isn't that exactly like Twitter? Everyone has their own medium, none of which are explicitly connected...

Tombone5 12y ago
It's not at all exactly like twitter, for one a text that needs to stand on its own (a blog post) will require far more work to be of any sort of quality than a simple reply on twitter.
- negativeview 12y ago
  Okay, I'll get more explicit. > I think Twitter is defined by the fact that it's about broadcast. Writing on a blog with comments off is 100% broadcast with no built-in solution for conversations to form. Twitter has a (flawed) way, so twitter is actually LESS about broadcast than this blog. > Communities are, above all else, defined by membership, the ability for people to identify as a part of one, and to participate in activities, and share things and experiences with the group. How does a reader proclaim membership in this blog. Sign up for comments? Post comments? Nope. How does a reader participate? How does a reader share their experiences with the group? Far easier on Twitter than here. > Every user floats by themselves, interacting with who they please. Every reader of the blog floats by themselves, interacting with nobody. > Try following a multi-party conversation using any of the official clients; How is THIS possible on the blog? You can email the author, sure, but you aren't going to see or be able to reply to anyone else that emailed him. There's also the widely-repeated quote of "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." Length is not necessarily indicative of amount of thought. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

JackDorsley 12y ago

Haha what a complete asshoe. Be nice if this random dude went away.

atjoslin 12y ago

Disagree. Twitter is immensely valuable for me to quickly communicate with people in my "community" (the Javascript tech world), as well as keep up on news in areas I'm interested in: the Javascript tech world & a few others.

freebs 12y ago
He also clearly doesn't understand how to use lists to create his own communities. I have lists for devs, friends, funnies, etc. With a little effort you can have these communities on tap in columns. Hey, if you're lazy, you can even subscribe to other's lists and put them in a column too. Twitter is not hard for conversation, so long as you can put together concise thoughts. I'll agree it does become a pain when you need to explain a lot, but that's why we have links and a multitude of platforms to record our thoughts.

GI_Josh 12y ago

I don't necessarily agree that Twitter users can't build communities. A friend of mine writes for a sports blog specific to an NFL team. His twitter account (and @replies) show that he is a part of a very strong community around the team. The tweets from these super-fans aren't just missives shouted into space, these people use Twitter almost solely as a response tool to each other. Their tweets look very much like something you'd see on IRC or a message board.

schoen 12y ago
I guess another way of phrasing the original article's claim is that although communities do form, they have no straightforward way to exclude strangers, interlopers, and even griefers: and except for incessant use of hashtags (which could eat up valuable space), there's no simple way for a person who is part of multiple communities to direct comments to only one community. That's a recipe for both serendipity and uncomfortable moments (or worse) if someone has strong opinions on, say, computer science, religion, and animal rights. People who chose to follow them over one thing will constantly see their opinions on other things. That might be great under some circumstances because it will promote more interesting and broader discussions or lead people to learn about ideas that they wouldn't have naturally come across in their own filter bubble. But it might produce some serious disruption in the conversation too, especially if that person's views are offensive or upsetting to some readers. I know a Twitter user writes a lot about computer science and a lot about sex and sexuality. I find both sets of posts frequently insightful, but the latter would be off-topic in a forum devoted only to computer science, and they do sometimes produce offense. It seems like the best case for avoiding really bad forms of conflict is when a group of people tweet almost exclusively on a single topic that outsiders don't find upsetting or offensive (or simply don't know about). But a lot of people do want to have at least some discussions that others will inevitably be offended by, and the broadcast medium can be a challenge for that if you didn't want to get into it with the strangers (or for that matter have some of them insult you, threaten you, or even dox you).
- schoen 12y ago
  An example: I remember a blog written by an Orthodox Jew on theology and also cultural and political issues within the Orthodox community. Periodically commenters would come by who would take exception to gender relations in the Orthodox world, or to the idea that there is a God who created the world and revealed his will to the Jewish people, who are uniquely continuing to follow it. The author would ban these commenters. His theory was that people are entitled to debate those topics somewhere, but that he wanted to have productive discussions on his blog with people who shared his basic premises. It's easy for me see two different points of view about this: that it creates a "filter bubble" of the sort described by Eli Pariser, where the Orthodox (and people with other beliefs, for that matter, in their own blog communities) never see their faith questioned, and have a subjective experience that their beliefs are "normal" and don't hear about the substance of criticisms or objections to them. Or that it actually allows discussions about the topics that the audience of that blog mainly wants to discuss, without having every single thread turn into a debate about the existence of God, whether the Torah is divine, and whether Orthodoxy should adopt gender egalitarianism. I think one idea here is that Twitter only makes one of these two options practical: the one where every thread can conceivably go off in the direction of a bunch of strangers saying that your basic beliefs are wrong (or even that you are a bad person).

jonstokes 12y ago

I totally agree with this guy. At least, I mostly do. I'm not sure if I care if it goes away, but I've drastically cut back on my use of it mainly for the reasons he outlines. I think he's onto something.

vonklaus 12y ago

I am not a huge twitter fan. I watched the http://foundation.bz/ http://foundation.bz/ interview with Biz Stone, and he seems like he has integrity. I think some of the management of twitter is a bit dubious, but the core function of the application is rather valuable. It is a good way to keep track of people & events. It makes it easy to broadcast things like occupy, arabspring, ebola, charities, entrepreneurs, etc. It is a good way for people to collectively contribute ideas such as news. It isn't really meant to be a social network. What the author purports to be a bug, is actually like the key usecase/feature of twitter. I don't regularly use it, and am pretty ambivalent, but I understand the value.

AYBABTME 12y ago

Alright, so twitter is terrible because its 'broadcast' instead of 'communities', and you don't like 'broadcast' but you like 'communities', so twitter should go away. a) "I hope Twitter genuinely ceases to be." b) "I want a product that enables me to build and participate in communities[...]." Having a product that enables b) doesn't mean a) must happen. Why come to that conclusion. Because you don't like participating in it, it should cease to be? I don't get how people come to conclusions like this. It feels very self absorbed to conclude a) from b). Maybe I'm just allergic to opinion pieces with hyperbolic titles.

baddox 12y ago
I suspect a) is more a response to his perception that Twitter is unique in the large amount of harassment it hosts.
smacktoward 12y ago
I don't want to speak for the author, but an argument could be made that a product that: 1) Is massively popular; and 2) Has design flaws that actively sabotage conversation ... could lead to a situation where "B would be better if A went away," due to network effects. No matter how good an alternative B you build, people will keep on suffering with A despite its limitations, because that's where all the other people are. The existence of A sucks away oxygen that B needs to grow.
- Eiriksmal 12y ago
  Exactly. Shotgun-blast your puerile thoughts to your dozens/hundreds/millions of followers. Don't bother reading any responses it might garner—they're going to be just as base. Now you're in the habit of just shotgunning statements into the crowd, so when you do the same thing on Facebook, you've forgotten how to engage in a more lengthy, rational discussion. Or, even worse, you've grown up with Twitter and don't understand that people can have lengthy, meaningful conversations via the internet.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

TrainedMonkey 12y ago

This too will pass.

jusuchin 12y ago

Completely disagree... what a selfish post.

penprog 12y ago

How about if you want a safe place you don't go to unsafe places? It's that simple. You can choose what you read.

jshevek 12y ago
But then you might accidentally find yourself in an unsafe space one day. Its better to convert enough people to your opinions about safe spaces, and eventually force the world to conform to your vision.

cheshire137 12y ago

Man, this dude's crotchety. "Stop liking things I don't like!"

serve_yay 12y ago
And twitter users doing their part in turn by getting upset someone doesn't like what they like ;)
mrweasel 12y ago
I can't disagree with you, even if I really want to. I'm the same way, I want people to stop using Twitter, because I don't want to use it. I went to dotgo this month, much of the last minute communication was on Twitter, which is a really annoying platform to navigate when you don't have an account. I want to get other people of the platforms that I don't use, so I'm not forced to deal with them myself. Being push towards technologies, behaviors and trends you don't like can be extremely frustrating. In the end me being bitter about Twitter, JavaScript, smartphones, tablets and all the other stuff I really don't care about isn't going to change public opinion. I comfort myself in the fact that Twitter will be dead soon if they continue to lose money.
- eclipxe 12y ago
  >me being bitter about Twitter, JavaScript, smartphones, tablets and all the other stuff I really don't care about Can you elaborate why you are bitter about the above?
  - BuckRogers 12y ago
    Well, for Javascript it's obvious. Not sure about the rest.
    - eclipxe 12y ago
      Well played :-)

jordanpg 12y ago

I suspect Mr Gaynor is tapping into a simmering feeling that many have that Twitter is inadequate for most communication needs (at least among technical crowds), and that there are now many, many more interesting alternatives now. He clearly cares a lot about his #Brand and being the among first person to say how uncool Twitter or FB or MySpace is becoming might very well boost his Klout score. I agree that Twitter is inadequate for serious communications and is the last place I go to read deeply on anything, but that doesn't mean it's not immensely useful and fun to many others outside my communities. I don't usually find myself hoping that things I don't use "cease to be". I think Gaynor must just be addressing his own social circles here and speaking hyperbolically.

notastartup 12y ago

His wish might just come true. Investors are also wary of twitter and it's ability to monetize. The huge userbase alone won't work forever. The end game for twitter will look in the shape and form of a buyout at a huge discount by an already hugely profitable company.

mbesto 12y ago

Slightly side topic - does anyone else feel like they "need" to use Twitter because it's a good distribution platform (the "human RSS"), but generally don't particularly enjoy it? I personally find myself thinking "oh maybe I should post that stupid comment that's in my head on Twitter...last time I did it I got X followers, so I should probably continue to do it"

baby 12y ago
yup. I'm worse than the author here, I've never understood twitter. It's bad for writing because of the limitation, it's bad to keep track of something because of all the noise, it's bad for discussions, it's bad for communities, etc... The only good things that I can come up with are: broadcasting, stalking someone, press 2.0. And yes I do use it, I have a twitter account with 600+ followers (I don't even know if they're called followers) and I just use it to promote and promote, and I dislike it so much that I miss on a lot of promotion by ignoring it most of the time.
- mcantelon 12y ago
  >it's bad for communities I'd say it's good for sharing intel within communities, just not for in-depth discussion (other sites are good for that).

diydsp 12y ago

Twitter is an example of product design by technical limitations, not what people need. Nevertheless, they hit very well, b/c the two were somewhat closely aligned for a decade or so. Now that it's being strained, some of its limitations are showing... ...But no matter what, I do not predict its imminent demise... Especially since they are mainly a technical layer, there is still a world of protocols they can implement on top of it to make it more like e.g. IRC, or whatever other comm. network people desire. Then again CB radio rose and fell quite hard without ever completely going away.

smacktoward 12y ago

If you want a more detailed critique of Twitter's design and the effect it has on conversations there, I wrote one last year: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/ http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/ /end self-promotion

fuzzywalrus 12y ago
I agree, this is more of an eloquent critique. Also this reads as "this is why I don't like twitter" instead of "stop liking things I don't".

api 12y ago

That's what I like about Twitter-- it's a global cocktail party. People tweet to one another about anything regardless of whether they know each other or what their relative socioeconomic background is. It is what it is. It's not for everyone. But the net is more interesting with it than without it.

firstaccount 12y ago

The communities of twitter are #hashtags.

gdulli 12y ago

It's kind of ridiculous and solipsistic to declare that something that exists for a purpose you don't care about shouldn't exist at all. I prefer Twitter to other social networks and haven't had any problems with it. (Though Twitter should improve the situation for people who do get harassed. You can't eliminate all anonymity on the internet.) I'm also not interested in the shallow/faux "communities" that are more easily facilitated by Facebook but I have no problem with allowing it to exist and I can't imagine censoring it as a whole due to the parts I don't like. Or even writing up a blog post about doing so.

kefka 12y ago

I'm another person who doesn't use Twitter, however I do have an account. And frankly, I fail to see many use cases. But I also acknowledge that the few use cases are powerful. 1. On the ground reporting 2. Messages to group of friends, like where to meet 3. Coordinating group efforts outside friends list in X social media 4. Warnings related to specific area/time 5. Error logs related to web services 6. Command/Control of hidden machines 7. Complaints to companies with sensitive web presence

vhost- 12y ago

>About seven months ago, I abruptly quit Twitter. Though I'd been thinking about it for a while, ultimately leaving was a snap decision for me. Lately I've been reflecting on why I hate Twitter so much. It took me a minute to figure out he never worked for Twitter and that he just quit _using_ Twitter.

todayiscrown 12y ago

I'm confused. His opening says >>> About seven months ago, I abruptly quit Twitter. And this is his twitter >>> http://imgur.com/xAyW4h1 http://imgur.com/xAyW4h1 Last I checked oct 21st's not "seven months ago" What gives?

lnanek2 12y ago
Could just be automatic posting from his blogging clients.

ehosca 12y ago

weirdo

tptacek 12y ago

I value communities too, but the open broadcast nature of Twitter is what I like about it: I can put a message out into the either ("sector-level FDE encryption is bad!" or "ChiSec is next Wednesday") and it quickly percolates to people who (a) I'm glad saw it and (b) I would not have known to send it to. Lots of good things have come from that dynamic. Twitter is full of abuse and harassment. Other communities are, too. One solution to that problem is policing, which is what HN does. Another is (for lack of a better term) cliquishness, which is what closed communities do. I see a lot of value in both of those approaches too, but every community management strategy has tradeoffs, and serendipity is an awfully powerful force to trade for orderliness.

_asummers 12y ago
OT, I didn't know about ChiSec, so thanks for that. I'm going to try and come to the next meetup.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Neato. It's 2 weeks from now. http://sockpuppet.org/chisec http://sockpuppet.org/chisec. We're going to put together something similar for HN-types.

programmarchy 12y ago

I always thought of twitter as a news filtering service. At least, that's how I use it. I follow people who tweet about things that I'm interested in. Journalism is about 'broadcast', not 'communities'. Should it go away, too?

mcantelon 12y ago

>It's fundamentally impossible to create a safe space with a public account Right, so use something else for that. Twitter grew because it's open. I interpret posts like this as an attempt to lobby for the creation of a caste within Twitter with the ability to censor. I've abandoned other large sites because of unreasonable censorship. EDIT: Gaynor thinks people shouldn't use HN too. Quel surprise. https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/259803468838080512 https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/259803468838080512

throwaway5752 12y ago

Is this some kind of joke? It has a Twitter icon on his website that links to his active Twitter account. On that account, 4 hours ago, he tweeted about this blog post (https://twitter.com/Alex_Gaynor https://twitter.com/Alex_Gaynor, https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/527851651097309184 https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/527851651097309184)

bartwe 12y ago

I'm surprised at seeing no reference to reddit which does allow for participation and discussion.

jshevek 12y ago
Reddit makes it much harder for you to completely shelter yourself from people who disagree with you (compared to, say, facebook). Some of the content of his post strongly suggests that he defines 'community' by his ability to block people he doesn't like or agree with.

_random_ 12y ago

Plus all good names are taken and there is no strategy for recycling unused ones - simply embarrassing.

habosa 12y ago

Ok this may seem crazy, but check out Google+ again. It is a really nice mix of broadcast and communities (when you can find a good community). It won't replace your FB or your Twitter, but it seems to have a solution to this one niche. It has the directed-edge-graph of Twitter and also really strong support for communities and pages. I know a lot of the developer communities on there are really strong (I work on Developer Relations at Google so I see it all the time).

lk145 12y ago

If discussions > broadcast then why disable comments?

jshevek 12y ago
He doesn't want discussions with people he doesn't agree with.

programminggeek 12y ago

Twitter won't go away for say 50-100 years. Why? There is value in the name/idea in the public consciousness. Let's not forget that myspace, friendster, and livejournal still exist. There are a lot of pre 2000 sites and brands that are still sort of a live in some kind of zombie state or another. It's weird.

nullc 12y ago
Myspace has no impact on my life... Thats "close enough" to gone for my purposes, and I assume the author's as well. I don't mine if there are people going around using tools that I don't care for, it's only when they're insanely popular beyond all cause do they exert social pressure on people who would prefer to not use them.

cloudwizard 12y ago

I am annoyed when people ask me for a twitter id to register. My twitter accounts are just for testing. I think there is a use for twitter as a generator for random number seeds

tg3 12y ago

Isn't blogging a form of "broadcast"? Twitter was a originally a "micro-blogging" service after all. I don't necessarily disagree with his point about the levels of abuse on Twitter, but the medium with which he is expressing his message (his blog) seems to disprove his point. Why do blog posts seem to be (mostly) free of these levels of abuse, while they're so rampant on Twitter?

serve_yay 12y ago

I quit it about a month ago. But I seriously, seriously doubt it is going anywhere.

getdavidhiggins 12y ago

https://quitter.se/ https://alpha.app.net/ http://sublevel.net/ https://cupcake.io/ https://ello.co/ ..the internet is made of choice

mrweasel 12y ago
Which sort of fails if 99% pick something different from you, or you don't want to pick.
- getdavidhiggins 12y ago
  I see what you're saying - but for the 1% that are influencers (who share and curate web content) - there is a strategy called POSSE http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) Basically a lot of people have their own independent rig, and then spam out the link to the silos, while at the same time, operating 5-7 social media accounts where they engage with the feedback on those silos (app.net/ello, etc) We all know these 'web personalities' - the Grubers, Anil Dashes, Marcos, and even the Gaynors

ChuckMcM 12y ago

This line stood out for me, "Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities; unless they do something so bad as to actually get banned from Twitter" I've heard this several times from people with large followers, basically that they can't escape the bad actors without taking their account private. I don't think this is a Twitter issue so much as it is a everyone-on-the-network-has-the-same-volume issue. In the 'real' world, the relative population sizes of trolls vs non-trolls means that trolls get drowned out by the noise. But on the Internet everyone gets the same level of 'voice' and a minority can drown out the majority, especially if they are willing to be antisocial about it. It is a hard problem. A naturally troll resistant but otherwise frictionless sharing platform. Maybe a voting button on every tweet, that is 'troll factor' (so +1 if they are a troll, -1 if they aren't) then use some data analytics to marginalize trolls. Seems like fertile ground for some fresh thinking.

Kalium 12y ago
The catch is that once you introduce marginalization mechanisms, abuse is inevitable. What people often want is some kind of abuse-proof marginalize-only-the-people-I-don't-like button.

tbatterii 12y ago

ironically one of the reasons i've entertained the idea of quitting twitter is b/c of annoying things that showed up in my feed from the author(and others). But I just un-followed him instead. the technical things I'm interested in, but I dont care for the politics so much.

roymckenzie 12y ago

sanctimonious bloviating He is criticizing Twitter for being something it isn't. It's a shame this made it to the front page of ycombinator news.

ben336 12y ago

Twitter is the best real time news source I've ever seen. Any discussion of it's utility that ignores that is missing how a huge percentage of its users actually interact with it. Yes its bad for conversations. Yes it is poor at building communities. But if you want to know whats happening in <insert area of interest here> Twitter can be a fantastic resource. Especially (but not exclusively) if your area of interest involves sports, tech, or politics.

vuldin 12y ago
Ahh, real time news! Yes I think that is the one biggest positive feature of twitter. When I was trying to remember some positive things about Twitter to respond to this with, I failed to remember this one due to all the other not-as-positive things Twitter is used for.
- prottmann 12y ago
  And that things are?

waylandsmithers 12y ago

Well, they don't make any money, so...

no_future 12y ago

Why is everyone so into Twitter? I've never actually met someone who tweeted.

fogleman 12y ago

Step 1: disable your own Twitter account.

fat0wl 12y ago

haven't we always known that twitter is just an anechoic chamber to stick narcissists in? i guess its alright for comedians/intellectuals to post amusing stuff (even then I find the tweet value to be inconsistent enough that its not worth scrolling through their history). outside that isnt it mainly a platform for egotists & social climbers to add to their self-importance? i like it cuz it kinda tires them out, maybe stops them from taking to the streets to act like hot shit -- and i never have to look at it :)

naiyt 12y ago
> haven't we always known that twitter is just an anechoic chamber to stick narcissists in? That's an incredibly broad generalization of ~300 million users.

gojomo 12y ago

Conversations work on Twitter if the participants share enough context, such as similar vocabularies or compatible high-level goals. Unfortunately the system and its harsh constraints is also really good at matching up people sure to misunderstand each other. I suspect, though, that a lot of recent angst is transient, due to the inrush of users with wildly different rhetorical standards, and the exciting novelty, including the excitement of discord and performative moralizing. But the novelty of nasty arguments with strangers will wear off – like how Farmville and similar games become less interesting when their basic mechanics and repetitive loops are understood. The true utility of Twitter will persist, leaving us with a better ratio of light-to-heat than some are experiencing at the moment.

golemotron 12y ago

> Twitter has no mechanisms for this. Every user floats by themselves, interacting with who they please. This denies us the ability to build communities, to set social norms, and to enforce them. Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities I read this and said "oh, he wants to censor people." Then, I got to the bottom of the post and saw that he doesn't allow comments either. It was a one, two punch.

hippowithgas 12y ago

I actually hope Twitter doesn't go away, it can serve as a fly-paper for the short-attention-span conversionist. The sort of people who talk at you, rather than with you. If they are all there, we can sneak off, to the other party, enjoy conversation, with give and take, learn, laugh, cry, take a real interest. It may even run to more than 140 chars. It will be great!

namank 12y ago

Broadcast has it's own use. I posit that broadcast leads to a more organic formation of a community since it ensures that communities are emergent rather than prescribed. Thousands of communities come into being and dissolve on twitter every single day - what, really, is the hashtag? People within an "idea proximity" (nearness of two ideas:)) commune about ideas with a gusto lost in other social sites. Twitter is one of the greatest communication gifts of this century.

squar1sm 12y ago

Yeah it's weird he still has a twitter account but I completely agree with him. Especially when I try to engage in a meaningful conversation. It's like excusing yourself from a loud party to talk to someone about something deep or complicated. Twitter is a party.

abhididdigi 12y ago

Lots of Negativity here again. Most of the commenter here are saying it is wrong when he says Twitter should die because it doesn't encourage good communication, and then blocks his own comments section. It just means he wants to have a meaningful communication. He says, you can email him, or write your own blog post to refute or add on to what he says. That way you will be facilitating a great communication.

adnzzzzZ 12y ago
>It just means he wants to have a meaningful communication. If you want to communicate you don't create barriers for it to happen. There's nothing inherent to comment systems that prevents people from writing meaningful comments.
jshevek 12y ago
Yes, there is a lot of negativity here. Do you really think that its based on a misunderstanding of his post? Maybe the negativity is a result of people understanding his post, and having different - arguably better - values than he does.

gameshot911 12y ago

How to make Twitter go away: Stop talking about it, writing about it, using it, thinking about it. How not to make Twitter go away: Write blog articles about how you want Twitter to go away, which are then shared and posted across the Internet.

freyr 12y ago
* then shared and posted across the Internet. * On Twitter, specifically. He tweeted his article about not using Twitter. Maybe he just wants people to engage with the @alex_gaynor #Brand.

spullara 12y ago

Just make your account protected.

stealthlogic 12y ago

You and me both, Alex.

paulannesley 12y ago

I completely disagree. > Twitter is good for two things: engaging with #Brands, and broadcasting messages to whoever wants to read them. I almost never engage with brands on Twitter. I do broadcast messages — to anybody who has chosen to follow me and hasn't chosen to unfollow me, both of which are freely done without any social consequences. On the flip side, I read that which others have broadcast, provided I follow them. And I'm free to shape exactly who's in that set of people, without worrying about circles or unfriending or which IRC channels to sit in. The author writes about communities, and about moderating IRC channels and making decisions about who can stay and who is banned. Perhaps he prefers to shape and steer communities in a way that Twitter doesn't facilitate. Personally, the ephemeral and asymmetric nature of the Twitter social graph is the defining feature. The 140 character limit is perhaps just a constraint which helped that feature survive. The author also mentioned harassment on Twitter. I've never been on the receiving end of it, and I hope I've never been on the other end either. But I believe it's a real problem. I hope there's a solution, but “Twitter going away” isn't that solution.

Emphaticdotco 12y ago

There's a Dutch saying that roughly translates to: "Life is a party but you've got to hang your own balloons." Twitter can be a fantastic place for community if you know where to look or are willing to organize it yourself. Tweetchats are a great example of this [1], the phenomenon known as "Black Twitter" [2] is another. (Although many ostensible members of "Black Twitter" have legitimate issues with how "it" is being studied and reported.)[3] Not to mention the ad hoc communities that spring up around events and pop culture happenings. As with many other things, it might just be a matter of what one makes it. [1]http://janetfouts.com/how-to-participate-in-a-tweet-chat/ http://janetfouts.com/how-to-participate-in-a-tweet-chat/ [2] http://www.annenberglab.com/projects/dsail-black-twitter-project http://www.annenberglab.com/projects/dsail-black-twitter-pro... [3]http://io9.com/what-happens-when-scientists-study-black-twitter-1630540515 http://io9.com/what-happens-when-scientists-study-black-twit...

basher 12y ago

Why I agree with article Emailed link to me from twitter redirected to http://imgur.com/uazq6A9 http://imgur.com/uazq6A9 http://i.imgur.com/uazq6A9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/uazq6A9.jpg Summary a big slot is dedicated to Westboro Baptists hate tweet. This was labelled news. In what universe is it ok to have direct tweets from WBC promoted as news content. Free speech is one thing promoting hate speech is another - big fail twitter.

IvyMike 12y ago

"This hammer isn't a very good screwdriver."

metaphorm 12y ago
I don't think that was Gaynor's point. I think he was saying something more like "this hammer is so popular nobody is using screwdrivers anymore, but we still need screwdrivers."

hoggle 12y ago

Twitter like Apple define themselves more by saying "No" then anything else and I love them for it.

arh68 12y ago

I acknowledge the irony of 'no comments' on this blog post but beneath that there is a point. All communication is broadcast. What differs is how those broadcasts are released and revisited through time. Twitter emphasizes the recent, most piecemeal events. Not building upon previous works, just consuming content FIFO and shouting back into the ether. Noise. An old blog post has more potential, more signal-to-noise, than an old tweet. Wikipedia is an interesting result of [anonymous] editors broadcasting content towards each other in a very constructive manner. Some termites might just stack dirt, but others can use simple methods to construct complex creations.

enkitosh 12y ago

I don't understand. You can build lists, I do and they are followed by other people. I have one list of Icelanders and I totally look at that list as a community of people. Just take Snoop dogg's account for example, he has a massive amount of followers. Is this not the community of Snoop dogg fans? You can find other Snoop dogg fans and follow them and interact with them if they are doing something that you like. I love how I can just go on twitter and there is @BettyFckinWhite going "You know who doesn't care that it's #NationalCatDay? Every cat." and I go "hah, that's hilarious" and then I go do something else. I think social media that aims at being everything you need on one site is robbing to much of our time. Twitter keeps it snappy, yet I can interact as much as I want.

electronous 12y ago
I, too, am a man in his early twenties. Good shit.
enkitosh 12y ago
Wait. He has a link to his twitter account in the header of the blog. What is the last tweet? 9 hours ago, a link to this article. He hopes that twitter will go away yet he uses it constantly? I'm confused to say the least. I don't know what this man wants!
- gurkendoktor 12y ago
  Of course you can use a service because it's too mainstream to avoid, and at the same time wish that it didn't exist. I've also signed up for Twitter because they stopped providing RSS feeds. That doesn't mean I wish them best.

Oblouk 12y ago

Twitters open API is very useful. Even if it doesn't allow you to get more than 1% of the tweets (without subscribing to firehouse and paying lots of $$$) it is very useful for many different projects of mine.

rantanplan 12y ago

Oh the irony! I stopped using twitter mainly because of Alex and other similar figures in the python community. I quickly found out that twitter(or maybe the social media in general) brings the worst in people. I was following people because of their status in the software community and I hoped that I might get informed about tech stuff directly "from the source". Instead, what I got were stupid jokes, rallies against "hostile" people that used "he" instead of "she" (oh the horror!) and other political nonsense. I put up with the brain farts of people I used to admire only for a few months. I then decided that twitter probably isn't for me.

krick 12y ago

I cannot understand why this thread seems to be so popular. I'm not sure if I ever heard of this Alex Gaynor before (although he seems to have some recognition, but not really much), this article explains to some degree why he hates twitter, not why twitter is harmful for the universe and as stated in the comments many times already there isn't much constructive critique in his reasoning. So, essentially it is simply "somebody wrote he doesn't like something" post and would be of interest only if this "somebody" is some really special person. Can somebody explain?

philwelch 12y ago

Honestly, @RealTimeWWII and its companion and imitator accounts (like @GuadaBattle) are, to me, the main justification of Twitter as a platform. If I didn't follow those accounts (and I will probably stop in three years once they finish) I wouldn't have hardly any use for Twitter.

mkr-hn 12y ago

The author has obviously never seen furry Twitter. One of my favorite communities. Maybe it helps that most people make a fresh account for it. It's diverse, safe, full of conversation, and seems to make a lot of people happy.

kakakiki 12y ago

Twitter is definitely not for everyone. It is definitely not for me. I don't want it to go away. I see people, communities achieving a lot with it - it is a medium to get heard.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

rpm33 12y ago

Twitter is an incredible medium for citizen journalism and news broadcasting in general. There is no doubt about that. It does have issues with tackling bots and fake profiles - something that it finds harder than other social networks like Facebook which have a better system in place for authenticating accounts. By subscribing to the right people on Twitter, my feed is highly curated to suit my interests. Their machine learning would only get better and I only wish they use the AI it to classify bots and other fake accounts to enhance user experience.

vuldin 12y ago

Thanks for posting this, I have had the same unpopular opinion since Twitter first appeared. While I don't necessarily think that Twitter should go away, I do think it should get out of the way of other methods for communication. There are much better forms of communication for many circumstances where communication is needed. Which is damn near everything aside from communicating with marketers and expressing witty one-liners to the world. EDIT: I forgot about one great thing about twitter that I normally don't think about (since all the other uses cloud this function for me): real-time news. There's not many tools out there that can handle this type of functionality better. Reddit serves the same purpose for many people and does so in an even better way in my opinion (no character limit, communities focused on a topic, etc.).

puredemo 12y ago

Says the guy with nearly 38k tweets.

casebash 12y ago

I hate Twitter as well. It is occupying a place that could very easily be occupied by much better products. It's primary purpose is to hold back innovation. I'm sure some people prefer Twitter as it is and it is valid for them to do so. However, the existence of Twitter is still massively harmful in terms of opportunity cost.

72deluxe 12y ago
I am not sure on your conclusions. I do not use Twitter (I have an account, only scammers and spammers follow me, I say nothing interesting on it) but if there could be much better products, they'd take the position of Twitter, wouldn't they? Twitter's primary purpose is to allow shouting in the street, not to hold back innovation. How is Twitter's existence stopping you from innovating?

drawkbox 12y ago

Twitter still rules the real-time news/information area. Communities like facebook/irc/forums are too closed for broadcasts like that. It has its purpose and it does it well. But you can also not use products you don't like. I suspect some Twitter hate as he spent time very close to it in working there. This is expected, you work on a product you might see more of the bad than the good. Game developers don't always enjoy the game because they see what they had to cut, directors can't watch a movie without pointing out flaws, security forces can't walk into a building without checking for safety, or you worked at Olive Garden and might never want that ever, ever again. When you work in it, you really get to know something, for better or worse.

toyg 12y ago

Alex Gaynor can be a bit of a troll. This time he wrote a blog post about things he (allegedly) doesn't like about Twitter, added a couple of "flammable" statements here and there to clickbait, and meanwhile he still has a Twitter account. It's not the first time he acts like this, regardless of his technical contributions. This is why I don't follow him and will keep discounting everything he says, sorry; he goes in the same bucket as Dave Winer and Eric Raymond, people who can code but whose overall opinions I really don't care for.

galfarragem 12y ago

I hope twitter doesn't go away. I was a very late adopter of Twitter because I always thought that Twitter and Facebook were the same. They are not. Twitter is slowly replacing my RSS and news reader. Twitter is not a community thing, it's about broadcasting (in real-time, if you need it, most people don't, they are just addicted). I don't tweet and I'm just following 11 people. I don't follow friends, I just follow who has something to broadcast. Twitter is great for that. Facebook is more noisy by concept. Their focus in communities and friends makes broadcasting side noisy. I had to turn off almost all my friends wall notifications, I don't have the time or will to read that one friend that I meet once a year went to the restaurant or played a game. It's just too much noise. That's why FB for me is nowadays mostly a chat/email friends app. FB is great for that once most people are there. (Not to be confused with: FB is great doing that..)

start123 12y ago

Twitter was never meant to be a social network. The author himself writes: "Twitter is good for two things: engaging with #Brands, and broadcasting messages", which is what Twitter is good at - a broadcast and a news consumption service. I don't see any other service that tracks realtime events as good as Twitter.

Avalaxy 12y ago

Twitter is awesome! It's so easy to use Twitter to connect with people you usually can't connect with because you have no way of reaching them. I use twitter a lot to find clients, support (e.g. I need someone from Google or Microsoft to help me with an issue), and much more. It's also a great way for me to gather news and updates. I follow the account of most of the tech I work with so I'm always up-to-date with their latest updates.

edraferi 12y ago
I agree that this is Twitter's best feature. It's very easy to find and reach out to almost any person or organization. It's easier than looking up a phone number, because you don't need to search through piles of "contact us" pages. It's also lighter and less cumbersome than email. I just wish it was easier to send private messages. Often I don't want my customer support communications to be massively public.

vittore 12y ago

I think some people will quit fb/twitter the same way they quit smoking or drinking. Hi there, I am recovering twiterian

davemel37 12y ago

By this authors definition, a community's primary function is to exclude others. While you are free to exclude whoever you want in your own life, it says something about you when you have a problem with others wanting to include the rest of the world. Whether you or anyone else likes it or not, we are in a time where we need to learn to adapt and include, not hide and exclude.

freehunter 12y ago
I don't want to talk to everyone, or listen to everyone. That's a simple fact of life, almost everyone can agree to that. I don't want to make an inside joke to the world, I only want my social group to hear it. The world might be confused or not find the joke funny, but my group would. Likewise, I don't want to see someone else's life displayed in front of me, because frankly I don't care about that other person. Life is too short to try to pretend to be interested in uninteresting people.

conradfr 12y ago

I dislike Twitter because so many people try to be clever, or think everything roaming through their mind is of interest to the world, and sadly because of retweets you can't 100% avoid them. But what I hate the most is useless articles filled with random twitter posts. It's the new and lazier street interview and it's as stupid as those "X number of people started a petition / created a facebook group about [random outrage of the day]". Twitter is OK to know when something is down, or when your favorite artist has a new album but it has weakened journalism.

cenhyperion 12y ago

How is this not a false dichotomy? The author presents it as "We can either have IRC communities and Facebook groups where everyone agrees with each other all the time or gets banned or we can have an uncontrolled twitter where people might disagree with me in ways I can't control" Both have existed very comfortably for a significant amount of time. I think (along with hundreds of millions of other users) that there's a lot of value behind a broadcast platform like twitter, and I've made some really important connections on it. It seems arrogant to dismiss that because it doesn't enable the exact types of communication the author wants to have (that are addressed by the other platforms he explicitly mentions). This is a clickbait article headline for the author's blog to get more attention, if he felt this strongly about communities, conversations, and against twitter he wouldn't disable comments, and tweet about the article. "This screwdriver is so bad at putting nails in the wall!! We should get rid of screwdrivers!"

dheera 12y ago

Weibo (the Chinese "clone" of Twitter) actually does a lot better job with conversations. It has its own built-in instant messenger, as well as a comment dialogue interface similar to what you see on Facebook. Also, you can add your own text to the top when you retweet. Nevertheless, though, I don't agree with the author's stance of "I hope Twitter goes away". If you don't like something, don't use it. Let the market decide what should exist, let hackers keep building better products, and let the market decide again.

jpindar 12y ago

Drinks from firehose. Complains about getting wet.

nimaMehanian 12y ago

You make excellent points. Twitter IS for broadcasting. It is the counterpart to community interaction. Say, you want to reach those who aren't in your community. That would be difficult on Facebook. In fact, it's a "uniquely defining feature" of Facebook not to facilitate that sort of usage. They both have a purpose. Say, a startup needs to communicate app status to its users so people aren't left hanging in mystery during a downtime. Twitter would help with that well. Maybe Twitter IS inherently less warm and more chaotic. I get that feeling too. (I don't even log-in often.) But I sort of use it to create a pseudo-community. Here me out. 140 characters are limiting, right? That means that the author of a post has two options: risk losing followers by posting chatter, OR make sure each word matters so that it's a saturated snap-shot of their current thought. Now, imagine that you follow a curated list of influencers (i.e., people that are involved-in and doing things you also are passionate about). THEY may not all know about each other, but YOU know about all them. (Think: one-to-many instead of many-to-many.) As a consequence of this, you're continually getting an influx of musings by people you respect and value the opinions of.

nimaMehanian 12y ago
Hear