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I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

martinboss.com

161–170 of 228 posts

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This begs the question to me, is there a way to "fix" Twitter, without greatly reducing its impact? It seems to me some people talk about making Twitter "the" public forum, but most of the fixes to Twitter seem to be about how to make it work for your niche. Which is great! Things shouldn't have to be big or making billions of dollars to be good. But "No politicians, no journalists, no institutions" doesn't sound lik…

The only talk of "public forum" comes from people who are desperate to force others to listen to them. I don't need TERFs and neo-Nazis in my feed, but they want to be there.

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Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#162
I "got" Twitter in 2007, which is why I stopped using it in 2007. Whenever I click a link to something someone has posted in Twitter, and I see what I view as a useful or insightful tweet, I momentarily think "maybe Twitter isn't so bad after all," then I scroll down to the replies, and see the other 99.9% of what Twitter is, and close the tab.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#163
post #20

I still don't get it. Nothing in this article makes sense to me, either. Not to denigrate the author - I'm sure what he posted makes a ton of sense, just not to me. I made a twitter account shortly after it first started, made a few tweets, and then it languished and I think it's probably long deleted by now. Last year my wife made me another one because "you need it to promote your OSS stuff". Okay so I made a few t…

Others read what you post and you read what others post. What is there to get? I can understand not liking the format or similar concerns, but if you don’t get Twitter… did you not get irc also?

If I tell someone something in IRC (or any chatroom or forum) they will almost certainly see it an likely respond. On Twitter, it will likely be completely and utterly ignored if its at anyone with a remotely high follower count. Most people don't enjoy the feeling of being ignored.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#164
post #103

I don't know if you really "get" twitter until you've had a throw-away tweet from 7 years ago dredged up and used to try and destroy you.

I auto-delete my tweets after three months so shrug

+1 same here: https://tweetdelete.net/

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#165
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only talk of "public forum" comes from people who are desperate to force others to listen to them. I don't need TERFs and neo-Nazis in my feed, but they want to be there.

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> So you are for peaceful/voluntary online segregation of people who don't share your values. Does this translate to the real world?

Of course it does. It's called having friends.

If you're having a conversation in a restaurant, and a stranger at another table overhears you and decides to interrupt with their contrary opinion, do you "owe" them an argument, or do you tell them to mind their own business and go away?

And then will the interrupter whine, "A restaurant is a public place! If you wanted to have a private conversation, you should have had dinner at home."

There's almost no situation IRL where you're arguing with strangers. That only happens online.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#166
i think the varied way of how people using it speak volumes of the strength and weakness of the platform, it's not the same tool to all people and that's fine.

It's still got a little bit of that internet magic which is direct access to unfiltered opinion from domain experts from the early 90s. I remember being able to email authors of books I'd read instead of snail mail that got me very excited.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#167
post #39

I still don’t get it. Why would I want to talk to my friends in public ? In a medium specifically designed to propagate out-of-context sound bites? Surrounded by trolls of all ideologies? I stopped posting anything on Twitter because there was nothing to say that’s worth the risk.

My first account was infosec twitter, I mostly would comment with positivity and was utterly ignored. So I let that account go away.

After Elon made the offer to buy twitter because of censorship I created a new account to test to see if I get censored. I never said anything at all. I was busy liking or following people at first but I connected to my country's politicians and that was enough for me to be shadowbanned.

>I stopped posting anything on Twitter because there was nothing to say that’s worth the risk.

To me it's not so much risk. If you're a platform who ideally wants to maximize activity on the platform. Censoring me because of world-view is really bad. Why would I waste my time commenting while shadowbanned? I just uninstall and stop.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#168
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the anonymous accounts rule. Some of the most interesting and insightful people on Twitter are anonymous. And we could say the same about Hacker News. Do you think this website would be better if we all had to use our real names?

i’m frequently confused by people referring to “anonymous” accounts on Twitter. every Twitter user needs a handle, so it’s not really possible to use it anything less than pseudonymously AIUI. by “anonymous”, do most people mean pseudonymous users who haven’t established an identity (i.e. few to no posts, or no bio, or egg avatar)? or do most people mean to capture all pseudonymous users under that “anonymous” label?…

Yes, most people use "anonymous" in this context to mean "not directly associated with a real name, or real identity."

Arguing about pseudonymous vs. anonymous seems overly pedantic, and not particularly helpful.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#169
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only talk of "public forum" comes from people who are desperate to force others to listen to them. I don't need TERFs and neo-Nazis in my feed, but they want to be there.

Quoted post unavailable.

Weird take, we have all sorts of mores around “you don’t talk politics at work”. People go to different churches, some people choose private schools. Online seems to be the only place that we have this idea that people have to listen to each other.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#170
post #7

I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed. I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engageme…

That's what social media should be. It should be a platform. Give more control to the users. Less control to journalists, moderators, political actors, etc.

Let users individually curate the content they want to see instead of trying to use every social media platform as a propaganda tool.

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