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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?

#261

Post by oneoff786 »

mariusor wrote: post #227
jstx1 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon/Friendica/Diaspora look way too weird to normal people. Their branding doesn't have mass appeal (it's like they coordinated to deliberately pick bad names) and most people don't care about decentralisation at all. People want a cool app that has other people on it (their friends, other people they know about and celebrities).

I'm surprised that people don't remember how silly twitter, twitting, twit were considered by serious people when the service launched back at the end of the naughties.

Sure. But on some level a bird tweeting makes sense.

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

#262

Post by chiefalchemist »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #248
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 na…

So it's everything many of us really are?

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

#263

Post by smcl »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #214
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?

To answer your question, since the other replies are being disingenuous, it's a dog whistle for groups including 'liberals', left wingers, and - historically - Jewish people. This is why the OP comment makes the unsubstantiated claim that it's a method of coordinating an in-group's thought - as though agreeing with a left-wing bias Twitter is because of brainwashing and propaganda. It's unsubstantiated because it's e…

> it's a dog whistle for groups including 'liberals', left wingers, and - historically - Jewish people

Well not necessarily. In some contexts that may be how it is used - I've heard GOP hardliners in the US using it this way. But for example the "elite" in the UK would largely refer to the right-leaning upper-class who attended "public schools" (note: discussed on HN previously, public school == very fancy, expensive, exclusive private schools) and Oxbridge, and who stumble into well-paid careers in finance and politics. I wouldn't say religion is a big part of it - both Jacob Rees-Mogg (Catholic) and Rishi Sunak (Hindu) would be considered members of the "elite", but their religious beliefs are orthogonal to their place on the class hierarchy.

The best answer I saw in this thread was from "bakuninsbart" but it was downvoted and appeared in greytext so many won't have seen it: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bakuninsbart

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

#264

Post by TeMPOraL »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #218
Jenk wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a completely pointless and banal digression into divisive politics when nobody asked for it.

If it didn't have a second meaning you wouldn't see this as divisive.

This. "Elites" is a motte-and-bailey term[0]. If you ask what it means, you'll hear all kinds of reasonable definitions like self-reinforcing networks of people, created by happenstance (e.g. everyone graduating the same prestige college the same year) and thus inaccessible to randos like you and me, that end up ruling things. Etc. But then the way the term is actually used by the anti-elite crowd, is mostly to mean "anyone with a reasonable argument I want to disagree with anyway, but who has qualifications or credentials that make them hard to be dismissed outright".

----

[0] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-wor...

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

#265

Post by mcv »

wruza wrote: post #200
mcv wrote: post #171

Isn't Mastodon pretty much a drop-in replacement for Twitter? And it has the advantage of being distributed and it supports Fediverse cross-platform sharing (with Friendica, GnuSocial, etc). I'm on Friendica so I can follow people on both Mastodon and Diaspora (which would be the drop-in replacement for Facebook). Still, I think we need something better. I'd like to see a social network with all of that, and support…

I don't like having to choose between commenting on the blog itself or on the social share of the blog post; those two should be integrated. Wouldn’t that be something of quality between usual youtube and facebook comments? If all comments here on HN were from all over the internet, would you even sign up? (If you perceive HN as “social shares” of course).

I think it needs to be in the control of the user. What do you want to see and how do you want to see it?

Of course I don't want the pile of shit that the YouTube comment section often is (Google Plus' YT integration was probably their worst idea), but when someone shares a blog post, so I comment on the share and discuss it with my contacts on the social network, or do I comment on the blog itself so the blogger knows about it and can respond? I want to be able to do both.

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

#266

Post by adolph »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #211
vntok wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also pets, objects, ideas and parodies.

Can we say that any of those are "using" Twitter though? I'm on the fence whether brands do.

I thought that Simon Williston’s dog used Twitter usefully but on review it turns out, no Cleo uses 4square.

https://simonwillison.net/2020/Nov/14/personal-data-warehous...

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

#267

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

How about none?

Maybe we are seeing the beginning of society putting less value on anyone and everyone having a global public podium? If all social media public content reverts to streams of ads, influencers, marketers, politicians, misinformation campaigns and every nutjob on the planet providing their "expert" commentary, then why bother? I can't see the signal of people I want to follow anymore with all that noise and I'm sure others see the same thing.

Social media has regressed to being a tabloid paper that talks about UFO's, bigfoot and what celebrity is divorcing or whatever. Its complete nonsense and mostly fabricated. Any new platform setup with similar features is going to regress to the same.

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

#269

Post by jaxn »

mariusor wrote: post #227
jstx1 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon/Friendica/Diaspora look way too weird to normal people. Their branding doesn't have mass appeal (it's like they coordinated to deliberately pick bad names) and most people don't care about decentralisation at all. People want a cool app that has other people on it (their friends, other people they know about and celebrities).

I'm surprised that people don't remember how silly twitter, twitting, twit were considered by serious people when the service launched back at the end of the naughties.

But it had a cute bird. And the fail whale.

It was approachable and silly. People didn’t take it seriously, but they weren’t intimidated by it.

Don’t underestimate the benefit of being underestimated.

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

#270

Post by Aldipower »

mcv wrote: post #171

Isn't Mastodon pretty much a drop-in replacement for Twitter? And it has the advantage of being distributed and it supports Fediverse cross-platform sharing (with Friendica, GnuSocial, etc). I'm on Friendica so I can follow people on both Mastodon and Diaspora (which would be the drop-in replacement for Facebook). Still, I think we need something better. I'd like to see a social network with all of that, and support…

To be successful in Germany, Mastodon needs to change his name first. It just sounds disgusting to my ears. Similar like the German word "Mastdarm". SCNR
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