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The Slow Goodbye to Twitter

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Re: The Slow Goodbye to Twitter

#51

Post by jsemrau »

smoldesu wrote: post #2

...and the slow hello to Medium? Nobody tell them that Medium is also a publicly traded company vulnerable to hostile takeover...

Medium is a dead platform. There is so much long-form content created that their algorithms can't keep up with tagging, categorization, and discovery (it seems). I find it incredibly hard to get real articles on the platform that are not either (1) the same 5 "insights" about a certain topic that had been flooding LinkedIn for years prior (2) copy-paste "solutions" from StackOverflow posts. (3) corporate updates

Re: The Slow Goodbye to Twitter

#52

Post by coffeefirst »

rchaud wrote: post #26

I think more people are realizing, finally, that social media has been completely hollowed out by corporate interests. Actually seeing organic content and conversations in one's timeline seems accidental these days. What point is there in continuing to post when it's clear Twitter will give preferential treatment to paid accounts? FB/IG are no better, they'd prefer you not post text+images at all, but pivot to video…

Right. I think people lost sight of the fact that they joined these sites back when they were fun. They stopped being fun a long time ago, and get more out of you using them than you do.

The one positive out of all this is how many people have decided not to look for an alternative. Nobody asked for mindless scrolling any more than anyone asked to sit in traffic.

Re: The Slow Goodbye to Twitter

#53

Post by robomartin »

rchaud wrote: post #26

I think more people are realizing, finally, that social media has been completely hollowed out by corporate interests. Actually seeing organic content and conversations in one's timeline seems accidental these days. What point is there in continuing to post when it's clear Twitter will give preferential treatment to paid accounts? FB/IG are no better, they'd prefer you not post text+images at all, but pivot to video…

> I am trying to do this by hanging out in the forums of software products I use, and commenting on topics there. Unfortunately, even that is not a given these days, as many software makers insist on a Discord for tech support and discussion.

Interestingly enough, I often think that USENET was the peak. Despite higher levels of technological sophistication, we seem to have descended into a "great UI, horrible outcomes" world when it comes to online group communications.

All these platforms are reinventions of USENET in various forms. Yes, sure, USENET did have legendary flame wars in some groups. However, for the most part, and particularly in technical domains, it was simple and fantastically useful. I learned a ton through various USENET groups back in the day and even went as far as making several friends, both domestically and internationally.

At this point the genie is out of the bottle. The best we can hope for is that these things get fixed or repaced with some undefined next-generation approach that restores utility and removes one-sided politics from the equation. Easier said than done.

Re: The Slow Goodbye to Twitter

#54

Post by lzooz »

binarymax wrote: post #8
mackatap wrote: post #3

Other than a bunch of people complaining about how Twitter is changing, I haven't seen any change at all.

I browsed it recently and the major change was the checkmark. So many trolls have them now. And it seems their content is boosted higher. It’s pretty bad.

Before, the checkmark was mostly held by people who work hard against my interests and the interests of my people.

Re: The Slow Goodbye to Twitter

#56

Post by Vespasian »

binarymax wrote: post #6

I checked out from Twitter mid-summer, and have used it maybe twice or three times since. It’s so much better NOT using it! I miss some of the conversations, but I can find my connections elsewhere. HN is my only social media now.

I only read tweets from (self) currated lists of science / institutional Twitter accounts that provided great content or ideas (random examples: ESA, Ken Sheriff, Brian Krebs, Blender etc).

The fundamental change was switching over to the "latest" feed instead of "top".

This skips all the inflamatory and political drama-lama stuff that is (almost) never relevant in the long term (and if it is, it will be reported elsewhere in long form).

In fact whenever I feel "enganged" by Twitter it's usually because they, once again, switched my timeline mode back.

I wish there was a way to get a "topical feed" that allows me to discover without the obvious attempts to inject unreleated content (in particular anything from the mind of Elon Musk)

Re: The Slow Goodbye to Twitter

#57

Post by bko »

rchaud wrote: post #26

I think more people are realizing, finally, that social media has been completely hollowed out by corporate interests. Actually seeing organic content and conversations in one's timeline seems accidental these days. What point is there in continuing to post when it's clear Twitter will give preferential treatment to paid accounts? FB/IG are no better, they'd prefer you not post text+images at all, but pivot to video…

> I think more people are realizing, finally, that social media has been completely hollowed out by corporate interests... What point is there in continuing to post when it's clear Twitter will give preferential treatment to paid accounts?

Aren't the paid accounts targeted to individuals? Corporations were always able to promote their posts and brand online. But it was not really possible for individuals, or at least not targeted for them. And the paid account is a signal that this person is not a bot (at least that's the goal). So wouldn't this change to lead to less corporate influence?

Re: The Slow Goodbye to Twitter

#58

Post by aschearer »

wellthatsawrap1 wrote: post #37
lapcat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now people are forced to (gulp) participate in the marketplace of ideas. Nobody is forced to do anything. People don't have to sign up for Twitter. Twitter users don't have to stay on Twitter. They don't have to tweet. They don't have to reply. They can still follow anyone they want, unfollow anyone they want, mute anyone they want, block anyone they want. Some people think of Twitter as high school debate club on…

[flagged]

Leave the tinfoil stuff for Facebook, please.

Re: The Slow Goodbye to Twitter

#59

Post by singleshot_ »

BrotherBisquick wrote: post #15
mackatap wrote: post #3

Other than a bunch of people complaining about how Twitter is changing, I haven't seen any change at all.

Quoted post unavailable.

This was always the misconception about Twitter as the "public square": that authoritarians could somehow leverage something to force people to listen to their bad ideas.

I'm forced to walk through the public square on my way to work or to buy groceries or hang out with friends. I'm not forced to use Twitter; it's just a website that provided an amusing speech product that I enjoyed.

Authoritarians saw Twitter and thought it would be productive for their political ends to force people like me to listen to their bad ideas. They couldn't, because Twitter was a private company that could control the moderation they used to create their speech product; it wasn't the town square and they don't have First Amendment rights there.[0]

Then an authoritarian purchased the platform and thought that it would be productive for his political ends to force people like me to listen to his bad ideas. But he couldn't, because I could delete my account any time I wanted to and find another place to seek amusement.

The main intellectual breakdown from which a lot of these people suffer is that the marketplace of ideas _already exists_ and it's what brings you things like, for instance, a liberal Twitter and an authoritarian Parler. These companies are (and should be) free to seek out their customers by shaping the product they produce by any means they want, including by banning you or deleting the things you say that will alienate or annoy their core consumer group.

[0]: obviously relevant and timely discussion of government action doctrine deferred.

Re: The Slow Goodbye to Twitter

#60

Post by aschearer »

All these people saying "social media is bad" -- are doing so on social media... Is it so hard to imagine for some Twitter may have filled a role similar to Hacker News? Personally, I got lots of value from Twitter, following people in the game development community. Now that's moving into various silos that are hard to find, disconnected from one another. I'll miss how it was just like I miss TIGSource and how I'll miss Hacker News when it eventually succumbs to the fuddy duddies.
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