Honestly, I think Twitter and Reddit are both sinking ships. Both of them seem to be run by people who really don’t know what they’re doing. They kind of deserve it, to be honest.
It’s almost like this Musk guy isn’t as capable as his fanboys would have you think. Are there still Musk fanboys?
He will probably attract the Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate fans if he hasn’t already.
“One of the incidents cited by ad executives was the spread of an AI-generated image that falsely suggested there had been a large explosion at the Pentagon.”
Sure do love it every time paid verification comes back to bite Musk in the arse.
It boggles my mind that anyone, outside of the far-right lunatic fringe, is still on that platform. I left months before Elon Musk showed up, because they weren’t doing enough to fight misinformation in 2020, and now it’s an absolute dumpster fire. I can only guess there’s something like the sunk cost fallacy at work here, and that’s why people are reluctant to leave.
I think a lot of reporters and bloggers got used to it too much and are now totally reliant on it to get their input for the quick articles. And as long as there are still people reading the Tweets and spreading the information, there always will be people making Tweets for easy publicity.
I keep finding myself on Twitter not by choice, but because it is the news outlet for a lot of individuals and other entities. Even if readers like me have largely moved on to other places, there isn’t really a one-size-fits-all alternative for microblogging.
Just this last weekend we had weather events disrupting my local Pride festival, and Twitter was the only easy place that they were able to quickly distribute status updates. Bluesky is still in private beta, and Mastadon doesn’t really work at all for this particular use-case.
Just this last weekend we had weather events disrupting my local Pride festival, and Twitter was the only easy place that they were able to quickly distribute status updates. Bluesky is still in private beta, and Mastadon doesn’t really work at all for this particular use-case.
oh yeah, that’s the other part: it’s an acceptable platform for everybody from 13-year old fangirls to the literal, actual president and his staff, and you can find everybody between those groups on the site. just very hard to displace that kind of universality, especially when everybody’s already on one place
I have former academic coworkers who use it to promote their publications etc. It’s an odd thing because their (very left) politics definitely don’t belong on twitter anymore. The only reason I can think of why they stay is because they are still convinced that one day they’ll become famous. Twitter really seems to play on the idea that everyone can be a superstar. Sad really.
I have former academic coworkers who use it to promote their publications etc. It’s an odd thing because their (very left) politics definitely don’t belong on twitter anymore.
for mid-level people in a space or community there’s really not much better than twitter currently: it has–or, i suppose, had–a good equilibrium of random people and smart or influential people, a unique equilibrium of semi-privacy and public space, and a culture and barrier for entry that’s low and overall decent for getting eyes on your work (to a point).
if you’re an artist, for example? there’s simply not a better platform for your work. dedicated gallery sites are fractal and don’t have all the other stuff twitter comes with. (sometimes they don’t even have all the art, to extend the example!) probably the closest mass-media to twitter that emulates the benefits is instagram, but instagram also has a different clientele and a very different culture.
Hey thanks for explaining this. Twitter’s not something I ever warmed to and still look at people with confusion when they use it. Like artists, there is a crazy work pressure for academics to get noticed. To the point of cruelty sometimes. It makes sense that Twitter would work because, like you said, it works well-enough and has a low barrier to entry.
Loving that big social media sites are screwing themselves over. Burn it all down.
Hoping Reddit is next lol 🙌
If Facebook still exists, Reddit and Twitter are likely too big to fail too. They might not make what they used to at their peak, but as long as the site isn’t fully abandoned they’ll get their revenue
I think a Facebook competitor’s critical mass problem is much harder than then a competitor to Reddit or Twitter’s. The appeal to Facebook is that you have all the people you know on there, and you can share updates with the mall and see updates from them all. As the portion of your friends and loved ones drops, it’s utility drops proportionally. If everyone uses Facebook, it’s a great tool; but if only 10% of your friends do, it’s kind of worthless. You don’t really want to have to post photos to two or three different sites to really share them. Having one place to connect with everyone in your life is kind of the point of Facebook.
On the other hand, Reddit and Twitter are just random things shared from random people. If you randomly deleted half of Reddit users or Twitter users, I literally wouldn’t even notice. There about the containt comma you really don’t care about or even really know the actual people.
The problem: I logged back in to mastodon today and it’s dead af. I can’t tell if I’m doing something wrong or is just not used at all.
Mastodon doesn’t push content into your face, you get only what you ask for: the people and hashtags you follow. One caveat is that hashtag follow works much better if you are on a larger instance with more users and their follows pulling in more posts for a given hashtag.
For a specific example I am on mastodon.social and I follow a handful of individuals and a few hashtags (#boardgames and #emacs are probably the biggest ones) and I see about 50-80 posts a day which is plenty for me, especially if I dig into their threads.
