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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?

#81

Post by gerash »

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…

Isn't that the original Facebook? When FB started everyone used their real name there which was unprecedented.

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

#82

Post by ulfw »

I know no one wants to hear this but... Facebook.

It does the same thing. With less character limit, more functionality and equally huge (actually bigger) user base.

Sure we can all go and re-invent the wheel for the 800th time (I am still fond of my ex company myspace!) but if you just want to move away from twitter TODAY there's Facebook (and instagram)

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

#83

Post by shafyy »

analogtom wrote: post #78

Bluesky, Dorsey’s new platform.

Exactly. I wouldn't go as far to say that it's better from a technological standpoint than other open social media protocols [0], but the fact that it's somehow tied to Twitter changes things. If Twitter chooses to switch to an open protocol, it will likely be Blue Sky. And based on my understanding of the texts between Elon and Jack, Elon is open to the open protocol idea [1].

Btw, you can sign up for their own client for Blue Sky here (beta waitlist): https://bsky.app/

0: https://atproto.com

1: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23112929-elon-musk-t...

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

#84

Post by alias_neo »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #76
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…

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…

You have a very "positive/optimistic" outlook on how this would go down;

My immediate thought was that an implementation of this platform would be using legal identification to prove humans, allowing for one a huge depository of highly-accurate personally identifying information; a security and privacy nightmare in my opinion.

This already happens in many places, but those are regulated companies, banks etc, I couldn't imagine a social platform holding the crown jewels like this ever not being a disaster.

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

#85

Post by alias_neo »

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

It's not neglect though; as the person you're replying to stated, its outright hostile by design. It was _designed_ to keep you _off_ the web, and only in the app.

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

#86

Post by apendleton »

samplatt wrote: post #34
MisterSandman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly highly doubt this. TikTok was a new idea and targeted young people. It has no brand value or widespread cultural support for it to be able to expand into other types of social media. Pretty much every TikTok creator hates the monetization and many are shifting focus to YouTube.

Interesting. I was under the impression that YouTube creators hate the lack of transparent moderation and have been moving to other platforms - often, like TikTok.

Almost certainly not. Nobody can match Youtube's payout of 55% of revenue to creators, or come anywhere close to it; Tiktok's monetization model is both worse at the outset and destined to continue to get worse still over time (creators are paid fractions of a fixed pie, so with more creators, each creator's share diminishes). Tiktok also has a notoriously opaque moderation process that has a reputation for censoring much more aggressively than youtube (doing things like banning profanity, which has never been a problem on Youtube).

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

#87

Post by throw_m239339 »

Nothing is going to replace Twitter. thankfully. We're heading toward smaller communities with 1000 max member forums, about narrow topics, hosted by regular people and not startups. Centralization needs to end.

Twitter barely made any money and VC aren't willing to invest in these projects, again.

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

#88

Post by tkk23 »

the_jesus_villa wrote: post #24
xnx wrote: post #17

TikTok is most likely to become the first mega app (what Elmo has stated he wants to create as X) that's popular in the US.

>TikTok is most likely to become the first mega app Why is this likely? Seems like it just does one thing well, and even that one thing now has serious competition from Youtube shorts (which are kinda better). Plus it's not cool anymore. Facebook seems to want to be a mega app but no one cares and it's just not happening because Facebook is a dinosaur. Twitter very likely won't become Elon's X app, but I think TikTok…

>Twitter very likely won't become Elon's X app,

Elon has experience with Paypal. Payment and identity management is the core ingredient for an X app. Twitter gives him the user base, and he has overspent enough that everybody is aware of Twitter to easily acquire new users.

Somehow it became normal that big companies don't role out new features very often. That's not a given. Elon can reshape Twitter and turn its NASA-like development structure into a SpaceX structure. If Twitter runs like a startup it could be reshaped within months.

However, Elon could also create something like the Vegas tunnel which supposedly doesn't have the safety features to handle a fire very well. [1]

[1] https://reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/yeni5w/elons_boring_t...

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

#89

Post by Quindecillion »

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/

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

#90

Post by okuntilnow »

Personally, I don’t think we need a twitter replacement. Mastodon is nice, but ultimately suffers from the same problems but at smaller scale.

I think it’s more likely that users will move to smaller communities - Discord, Telegram & WhatsApp groups etc.

I’m surprised that Whatsapp hasn’t developed better community functions.

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