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Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

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Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#241

Post by yaddaor »

weberer wrote: post #157
Quindecillion wrote: post #89

There's the nostr protocol that could be a good censorship resistant decentralised alternative [1] Jack Dorsey (ex-Twitter CEO) is also working on a protocol with similar properties [2] Neither can really replace Twitter right now, but they're interesting alternatives coming down the pipeline. [1] https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr [2] https://blueskyweb.org/

I'm pretty sure the people leaving Twitter right now are in favor of censorship.

Probably not censorship but rather reasonable moderation and civility.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#242

Post by [deleted] »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #228
lazyeye wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Nothing has accelerated media groupthink more than Twitter.

Reddit, HN and other online commentary platforms where contributions get "scored" are thoroughly deserving of an honorable mention when it comes to fostering groupthink.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#243

Post by mcv »

napolux wrote: post #75
cpeterso wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram is practically anti-text. The app doesn't linkify URs because they don't want users to escape the app. Users worked around this with "see link in bio" to access Linktree pages. The app won't even let users select text in posts because they might copy a URL and escape the app.

which makes me kinda crazy after all these years. links are the pillars of the web and these apps neglect them

All these centralised, privatised social networks are basically anti-web.

I think most of Big Tech has betrayed the goal of the Web. The only really big, popular site that's true to the original goals of the Web is Wikipedia. Everybody else just tries to lock people up in their own walled gardens again.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#244

Post by pjc50 »

remarkEon wrote: post #138

The vast majority of commenters here fundamentally misunderstand what Twitter is, or rather what it has become. It's not a "social network" anymore. I mean, it is in the technical sense - you and I can both sign up for an account. But what it is today is an elite coordination mechanism, and Twitter became this because it was the first of it's kind and some sort of momentum or technological inertia put us where we're…

> Journalists, politicians, business people, elites more generally etc. all use this thing to coordinate what they think about basically everything.

In the UK this is done over Whatsapp. And occasionally email (see Suella Braverman bravely leaking confidential documents, getting sacked, and getting rehired). Their twitter content is the output of that process. You can see MPs tweeting coordinated statements.

If twitter has any value it's been in enabling all sorts of random communities, especially marginalised ones, to have a voice and coordinate. That was its role in the Arab Spring movement, for example. But there's a limit to how far that can go.

(People always forget that there are entire subcultures they aren't aware of on Twitter which you only see when they achieve viral escape. It's a gain-of-function lab for viral content)

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#245

Post by amadeuspagel »

I think substack is probably in the best position:

- Asymmetric. You can follow people who don't follow you. The most important differentiator twitter has from facebook.

- Easy to get started writing, and even easier to get started reading, subscribing - you only need an email.

- Community. Substacks at least have comment sections. Still, not the same as twitter.

I think the basic of idea of substack - building it around email - has more potential in general. Maybe that's the future. Email is the open protocol for messaging and identity that everyone uses.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#246

Post by krapp »

yaddaor wrote: post #241
weberer wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the people leaving Twitter right now are in favor of censorship.

Probably not censorship but rather reasonable moderation and civility.

Unfortunately, those are considered censorship nowadays.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#247

Post by pjc50 »

hinata08 wrote: post #231
blitzar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wtf is an "elite" anyway? The richest people in the world ... but not the ones that agree with me? The politicians ... but not the ones on my side? The athletes ... except for my team?

Different countries have different networks of power. I suggest you google 'networks of power', which is the academic term as far as I know. English countries like UK and USA are shaped around 'clubs'. You can only join one if you're appointed Japan has a set of corporation leaders who exchange informations, who came from families. And some countries like France are being weird. There, your social status isn't decide…

Yes: and all of these pre-date Twitter. Twitter just makes it more legible.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#248

Post by andyjohnson0 »

remarkEon wrote: post #138

The vast majority of commenters here fundamentally misunderstand what Twitter is, or rather what it has become. It's not a "social network" anymore. I mean, it is in the technical sense - you and I can both sign up for an account. But what it is today is an elite coordination mechanism, and Twitter became this because it was the first of it's kind and some sort of momentum or technological inertia put us where we're…

> elite coordination mechanism

I'd agree that this is one of its functions - albeit an emergent one, in that the "elites" probably didn't anticipate it going this way.

Its also an amplifier for outrage, from the personal level ("look how bad this sandwich is") to the political (organised, structured disinformation). And its also an addictive scratching-post for certain groups (mainly journalists and pols, but also narcissists like Trump and Musk and Ye). And probably other things too.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#249

Post by pjc50 »

verisimi wrote: post #112
afinlayson wrote: post #62

It'd be nice if there was a platform that was specifically designed for People, not bots / propagandist. Corporations should need to pay to be identified as such, and we should know when a person vs a corporation says something. Does this exist... not that I've seen. Vanity metrics like number of users have become real metrics for valuation... until that's broken we can't have these discussions. But my biggest proble…

> It'd be nice if there was a platform that was specifically designed for People, not bots / propagandist. I don't know how you can say this, when they were/are one of the main drivers? Did anyone ban Hillary Clinton from speaking? No. But, nevermind characters such as Alex Jones etc, they banned the sitting president from speaking on their platform! Whatever your political position, I find it amazing that banning op…

You have to ban hate propagandists or you get people attacking the husband of a senior politician with a hammer, based on whatever weird combination of conspiracy garbage they participated in.

I was genuinely surprised the Brazilian election went as well as it did: there were reports of pre-election violence, but once all the votes were counted the losing candidate just conceded properly.

But America won't see or understand how terrorism works in the 2020s until it has another 9/11. At which point it will conduct reprisals against the wrong targets again.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#250

Post by zimpenfish »

klabb3 wrote: post #109
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way the Internet is built, it's very difficult (maybe impossible) to ever tell if a client app is being operated by a human or a bot. There are various ways to make automation harder, and there are heuristics to guess if the operator might be a bot, but neither are absolute. The best we can build today is an environment that "feels" like everyone is human but where we don't actually know and where that's almost c…

> The way the Internet is built, it's very difficult (maybe impossible) to ever tell if a client app is being operated by a human or a bot. Indeed, I'm leaning towards it's not possible: - Even if you required government id, you'd get a market of people selling their unused accounts, or access to them. - You can use end-to-end DRM, like iMessage, to rate limit and complicate access to accounts, but it prevents access…

> If you make "followers" and "influence" your inofficial currency, the spam and impersonation isn't exactly a mystery.

How would that translate to, e.g., email where spam and impersonation is a huge decades-long problem but there's no "followers" or "influence" to be gamed?

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