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 so they can throw ads in between and make their Christmas bonus.
The author has the right idea: instead of wasting your attention on these dumpster fires, focus on the non-corporate communities where your voice is valued. 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.
I've spoken about this as well on a blog post [0] about the death of old message boards and the unique cultures they had:
> insist on a Discord for tech support and discussion
Communities moving to discord or slack is really dumb. You lose so much discoverability in favour of real time conversation about a subject that almost always prefers asynchronous communication.
Is it just hipster influence run amok? (shakes fist)
Unfortunately, it's because they can 'engage' their audience better with Discord's features, than they can on an old-school message board system like Discourse.
> 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.
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.
This is partially why I think the crop of 'new' sites like Post.news, Hive Social, Gas App etc are all flash-in-the-pan stuff that will die off like Clubhouse did.
For one thing, there are too many apps already, no one wants to create another login. And secondly, as you said, people do not want "Twitter, but better". They want Twitter to go back to what it was pre-2016, and that's not possible, that bell cannot be un-rung.
> 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?
> So wouldn't this change to lead to less corporate influence?
It's the adverse selection issue. The people willing to pay for Twitter Blue are the people that were already using Twitter as a "lead-gen" source; so their content was mostly spam disguised as engagement-bait ("Here are the top 10 writing tips from Harvard professors [thread emoji]").
As for bots, I don't frequent the topics that attract them, so the visible bot activity I've seen is limited to the replies section of high-traffic topics (crypto, covid, musk, politics).
Corporate bots tweet messages, while spambots mostly retweet someone else's post.
Good article, but the author doesn't mention how to find those communities (or if they even still exist)
I used to be a fan of the BB systems, which were a fantastic joy to be part of and contribute messages or even readings and watch other community members grow.
I wish I could go back in time to relive those days because it was the most fun and also the most insightful experience for me on the Internet.
Nowadays, everyone is trying to sell you something
Musk's drama posts if anyone you follow follows him. Stopped Twitter partially because I'm tired of reading whatever his current emotional outburst is.
My ads have gone from mainstream brands to dregs, degens, and grifters. This doesn't seem great, unless Elon's intent is to replace advertising revenue with other sources.
I'm still getting the same tech company and video game ads. Haven't noticed a difference. I block all the accounts that are ads but even then I still get ads from mainstream companies I haven't blocked. Theres still plenty of companies advertising. I have yet to encounter anything sus apart from some rando paying to promote a meme or shitpost.
I guess, traffic is great. I bet a big fire on a busy street leads to a bunch of gawkers too -- but maybe the restaurant next door is not getting any value from that foot traffic.
In the case of twitter's business model they have lost a projected 300-400MM of ad placements for the forecasted year -- so each of those visitors is consuming cost but twitter is unable to collect the impression charges as the buys are lower than the inventory.
So yeah traffic is great -- but not always profitable (especially when you insist on peeing in the pool).
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.
They let you browse recommended content and user profiles now without getting a fullscreen "please log in" modal covering the web client, which is nice.
Moderation seems to have changed by a lot. More gory videos stay up, nsfw pictures stay up, etc. It will slowly go out of control if this is a trend, I would guess.
Well, my account has quit bleeding follows and my tweets "feel" as though they have more reach, although that may just be more conservatives returning to the platform.
I _started_ using again Twitter after 6 years, when all this drama started (don't ask why, I don't have an answer).
Here's what I've noticed has changed:
1) It's fun again! Not at all in the same way as back in the first year, but in a commercial way, like TV or something
2) It's best enjoyed if you just go ahead and smash that block button whenever you encounter someone pushing an agenda. I have certain political leanings, but I'm happy to bring out my block-gun even for people who lean with me. I simply don't want that kind of heaviness trying to be discussed in a mob-ruled short message format. Many reasonable views are also unpopular or unfashionable
3) It's no longer about hearing from your friends or people you picked. Guess this is a result of point (1), but what you see seems to be _only_ what the algorithm knows you want to see, which is a real shame
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)
Twitter is not going anywhere anytime soon; there is no replacement. Mastodon does not fit the needs of the millions of users using the platform daily. I believe that Twitter will terraform what we think of as social media, and with that, a new way of communication will emerge
"I'm emotionally detaching myself from social media"
"I have no idea what will come next. And if I'm honest about it, I think I don't actually care. Every day that passes I seem to care less and I’m resenting more the distractions and the checking of who said what."
"I do have a natural instinct to just quickly Tweet what’s on my mind. Partly I need to refrain myself from doing that"
"On your death bed, will you wish you had tweeted more? Not me."
"I got an invite and set up an account on Post, but honestly, I can’t be bothered. The same goes for Mastadon [sic]"
Twitter always has been a rage factory before the Musk takeover and I already created and closed my account on the same day after trying it before many years ago. It is still an outrage machine.
It is not just Twitter that is the problem, it is the entirety of social networks that are outrage machines, and the solution is not replacing it or joining one that is worse than Twitter.
> If a good thing comes out of this whole Twitter chaos, I hope that people return to smaller communities.
This is the reason why Twitter, etc isn't going anywhere due to its central ease of discovery, no matter how bad the outrage machine is on there. This is what the author fails to realise and the journalists still can't stop using it and linking Tweets, since their audience is still there.
> stop caring so much about building an audience and learn to connect authentically again.
Yet in order for the author and other journalists to monetize their articles and get more eyeballs, they need an audience, hence the reason why many of them need to use Twitter to advertise and grift their Substack newsletter(s). [0]
The immediate collapse of Twitter has been greatly exaggerated by the past few weeks by a very small subset of angry screeching voices and doomsters.
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.
Readit News
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 so they can throw ads in between and make their Christmas bonus.
The author has the right idea: instead of wasting your attention on these dumpster fires, focus on the non-corporate communities where your voice is valued. 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.
I've spoken about this as well on a blog post [0] about the death of old message boards and the unique cultures they had:
[0] https://fuzzcrush.xyz/blog/dead-forums-extinct-communities-a...
Communities moving to discord or slack is really dumb. You lose so much discoverability in favour of real time conversation about a subject that almost always prefers asynchronous communication.
Is it just hipster influence run amok? (shakes fist)
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.
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.
For one thing, there are too many apps already, no one wants to create another login. And secondly, as you said, people do not want "Twitter, but better". They want Twitter to go back to what it was pre-2016, and that's not possible, that bell cannot be un-rung.
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?
It's the adverse selection issue. The people willing to pay for Twitter Blue are the people that were already using Twitter as a "lead-gen" source; so their content was mostly spam disguised as engagement-bait ("Here are the top 10 writing tips from Harvard professors [thread emoji]").
As for bots, I don't frequent the topics that attract them, so the visible bot activity I've seen is limited to the replies section of high-traffic topics (crypto, covid, musk, politics).
Corporate bots tweet messages, while spambots mostly retweet someone else's post.
I used to be a fan of the BB systems, which were a fantastic joy to be part of and contribute messages or even readings and watch other community members grow.
I wish I could go back in time to relive those days because it was the most fun and also the most insightful experience for me on the Internet.
Nowadays, everyone is trying to sell you something
In the case of twitter's business model they have lost a projected 300-400MM of ad placements for the forecasted year -- so each of those visitors is consuming cost but twitter is unable to collect the impression charges as the buys are lower than the inventory.
So yeah traffic is great -- but not always profitable (especially when you insist on peeing in the pool).
It's not cool anymore to be in it. In fact it's cool to your aspirational peers to say you dislike it now.
Dead Comment
Here's what I've noticed has changed:
1) It's fun again! Not at all in the same way as back in the first year, but in a commercial way, like TV or something
2) It's best enjoyed if you just go ahead and smash that block button whenever you encounter someone pushing an agenda. I have certain political leanings, but I'm happy to bring out my block-gun even for people who lean with me. I simply don't want that kind of heaviness trying to be discussed in a mob-ruled short message format. Many reasonable views are also unpopular or unfashionable
3) It's no longer about hearing from your friends or people you picked. Guess this is a result of point (1), but what you see seems to be _only_ what the algorithm knows you want to see, which is a real shame
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.
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)
Deleted Comment
"I'm emotionally detaching myself from social media"
"I have no idea what will come next. And if I'm honest about it, I think I don't actually care. Every day that passes I seem to care less and I’m resenting more the distractions and the checking of who said what."
"I do have a natural instinct to just quickly Tweet what’s on my mind. Partly I need to refrain myself from doing that"
"On your death bed, will you wish you had tweeted more? Not me."
"I got an invite and set up an account on Post, but honestly, I can’t be bothered. The same goes for Mastadon [sic]"
Not yet. You're right that Mastodon is not ready for the masses, which makes me wonder if federated systems can ever have mainstream appeal.
Currently biggest problem is ease of registering: Suggested way to register is through joinmastodon.org and it's pretty complicated.
If mastodon.social could handle the influx, they'd open up registration from that site which is much easier way to register.
Deleted Comment
It is not just Twitter that is the problem, it is the entirety of social networks that are outrage machines, and the solution is not replacing it or joining one that is worse than Twitter.
> If a good thing comes out of this whole Twitter chaos, I hope that people return to smaller communities.
This is the reason why Twitter, etc isn't going anywhere due to its central ease of discovery, no matter how bad the outrage machine is on there. This is what the author fails to realise and the journalists still can't stop using it and linking Tweets, since their audience is still there.
> stop caring so much about building an audience and learn to connect authentically again.
Yet in order for the author and other journalists to monetize their articles and get more eyeballs, they need an audience, hence the reason why many of them need to use Twitter to advertise and grift their Substack newsletter(s). [0]
The immediate collapse of Twitter has been greatly exaggerated by the past few weeks by a very small subset of angry screeching voices and doomsters.
[0] https://twitter.com/rosiesherry/status/1599063645320671232
The author made no predictions about the future of Twitter. Literally: "I have no idea what will come next."
Also: "I’m not closing my accounts(s) down, but I definitely care less and will be posting less. even if that habit is hard to break."
#Holesarenotwebs.
The link is to a blog post, not to social media.