31–40 of 64 posts
Has a clone of a social media site ever replaced an original? The closest I can think of is Tiktok being kinda similar to Vine but that feels like a stretch. I don't think Bluesky will succeed unless it offers something different to the basic Twitter experience. It's hard to picture enough people giving up Twitter (or using both) for it to reach the critical mass required to sustain it.
The Twitter replacement for me isn't Bluesky, it's a combination of Bluesky and being less online. I won't get attached to Bluesky. If it significantly degrades like Twitter I'll move on from it pretty easily. I've already started to get mildly turned off by Bluesky since it began interrupting profiles and feeds with "suggestion" blocks. The engagement hacking has started.
Back when I was younger and addicted to Reddit I remember unfollowing all my subreddits and hacking together a little script that hid the follow button. That friction made Reddit a lot less desirable.
I’ll no doubt eventually try out Bluesky, but I don’t think it could ever capture Twitter’s magic pre-Elon.
Unless Bluesky or Threads tap into the Zeitgeist, Twitter isn't going anywhere. As much as whatever political side would love to see it falter, those invested in its downfall might have to temper their expectations. Twitter is a mirror of the human fabric — messy, contradictory, brutal. For all its flaws, it's the only service that reflects society's pulse in real-time.
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I'm not familiar with the other similar sites, but Bluesky seems much more interesting as a product than Twitter/X ever did. I think the way they encourage users to build/share custom feeds, and especially how they can be independent of your follow graph, is really interesting. The problem with these sites has always been having a single algorithmic feed controlled by someone else IMO. Some interesting feeds I've see…
I have fully switched to Bluesky at this point anyway, but the list approach worked fine for me on Twitter long after most users were complaining about the feed algo.
Unless Bluesky or Threads tap into the Zeitgeist, Twitter isn't going anywhere. As much as whatever political side would love to see it falter, those invested in its downfall might have to temper their expectations. Twitter is a mirror of the human fabric — messy, contradictory, brutal. For all its flaws, it's the only service that reflects society's pulse in real-time.
Is there such thing as accurately "reflecting society's pulse" within individual posts? Sure, maybe you can pull big data to understand public sentiment on certain topics or events. But the platform's goal is to present users with content they are most likely to engage with, so that they spend as much time on the platform as possible (and therefore view as many ads as possible). That content does not reflect society—it's often targeted ragebait. When users are goaded en masse by ragebait and engagement farming, some percentage are going to develop a distorted view of public sentiment, and their own engagement will further the issue.
The fact is that content discovery algorithms and moderation largely shape the tone and personality of a platform, both for a viewer and for a contributor (who is psychologically inclined to want to fit in).
Twitter isn't going to collapse and die overnight, but this could be the start of a 5-year trend where the "utility" of Twitter over other platforms gradually shrinks as reputable brands and public figures diversify their presence.
isn't it obvious to everyone that the X/Twitter exodus is just a forum split? haven't all of us of a certain age participated in a forum that eventually devolved into drama, and then everyone picks sides, and someone makes a new forum, and half the group leaves? That's all that's happening on X. Now we have a bunch of twitters: X, Bluesky, Truth, Fediverse. They're all twitters and the X exodus is just a twitter spli…
> I have written before in The Atlantic about a problem that I see as superordinate to all of these others: People just aren’t meant to talk with one another this much The irony of publishing an article intended for a mass audience about how people shouldn't talk to each other. Obviously journalists are the only ones who can be trusted with such power...
Strange article, social media isn’t going anywhere, it’s just evolving. The decline of X is due to Elon, that’s all.
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And there is some irony in your praise for tolerance.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_...
Has a clone of a social media site ever replaced an original? The closest I can think of is Tiktok being kinda similar to Vine but that feels like a stretch. I don't think Bluesky will succeed unless it offers something different to the basic Twitter experience. It's hard to picture enough people giving up Twitter (or using both) for it to reach the critical mass required to sustain it.