from Hacker News

We don’t need a new Twitter

by furrowedbrow on 8/17/23, 1:36 PM with 94 comments

  • by abhv on 8/17/23, 2:29 PM

    See also this thread from yesterday, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37147914

    "Thousands of scientists are cutting back from Twitter"

    Essentially, a survey published in Nature about twitter usage among scientists dropping, in part, because of the phenomena mentioned in this New Yorker article.

    Eg:

    "Žiga Malek, an environmental scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam, mentioned in the survey that he had started seeing a lot of “strange” political far-right accounts espousing science denialism and racism in his feed. He has to block them constantly. “Twitter has always been not so nice let’s say, but it is a mess right now,” he said."

  • by LikelyABurner on 8/17/23, 3:43 PM

    We don’t need social media, period.

    Social media is a fundamentally flawed model that you have can have human communication on a global scale with a “The Algorithm” used to cleanly order high quality capital-C “Content” into numeric categories that can be parceled out to drive capital-E “Engagement”.

    If you told people about this 30 years ago, they would have laughed at you, and not because of some garbage about people expecting horses instead of cars (Christ how I’ve come to hate this quote, it needs to die a painful death) but because it is a fundamentally stupid idea that only an autist that doesn’t actually communicate with people could have come up with. This is not how people communicate, this is how computers operate, and we’ve been shoving humans pegs into computer-sized boxes using addiction to dopamine hits to keep them firmly wedged in there, and now we’re wondering why everything’s going to shit as a result.

    The old ways were best. An ecosystem of small forum communities where the only ordering is time (the ordering none of us can escape) and the subject of the conversation, and the community itself evolves its rules organically through migration, not what a committee of managers in Silicon Valley thinks its CoC’s should look like this month.

  • by add-sub-mul-div on 8/17/23, 2:44 PM

    Leave the eternal September on Twitter and Threads. Let early adopters enjoy Mastodon/Lemmy for a long while before the followers very predictably ruin the things that leaders like about small/medium communities.

  • by ulrischa on 8/17/23, 2:19 PM

    One important part is missing in this article: RSS Feeds! The missing aggregation of news can be done easily with RSS. I'm waiting for a online service that adds tue conversation part to the aggregation part that RSS feeds offer for years

  • by jdblair on 8/17/23, 3:02 PM

    I'm a little surprised the article didn't mention Mastodon. It has its warts and issues (i mean, ahem, features) like no full-text search and no quote-posting, but Mastodon does generate the small discussion forum feel, but with the ability to link out to other communities.

  • by chilmers on 8/17/23, 2:43 PM

    The article presents small discussion forums as safe and cosy, which they can be, but their insular nature also makes them a perfect breeding ground for extremist views. We shouldn’t ignore that most of the radical politics and conspiracy theories swirling Twitter are born in such small forums.

  • by tonmoy on 8/17/23, 2:10 PM

    Haven’t we seen the same public discourse time and time again? A lot of people left FB half a decade ago, before that it was something else. I suspect we’ll keep seeing the same thing again. People want to be consumed by social network probably to their own detriment

  • by kazinator on 8/17/23, 2:49 PM

    Not mentioning Mastodon (not even just to disparage it as not being worth further remarks) makes the article look blinkered.

    Threads is related to and interoperates with Mastodon; so Mastodon is relevant to an article in which Threads is the main topic.

  • by kubb on 8/17/23, 2:33 PM

    What if I want a platform without open antisemitism (or any for that matter), and that doesn't promote emotionally charged content as much?

  • by hotdogscout on 8/17/23, 2:31 PM

    Just use Mastodon (?).

  • by mattbgates on 8/17/23, 2:47 PM

    Soon as the takeover happened, my account got hacked, used for crypto spam, and banned. I can't use X. Had that account ever since the early days of Twitter. Tried putting in an appeal but its automated. Am I really missing out on anything?

  • by ChrisArchitect on 8/17/23, 3:13 PM

  • by romusha on 8/17/23, 2:19 PM

    People still use twitter?

  • by zzzeek on 8/17/23, 2:49 PM

    oh whatever, says "The New Yorker" that would like to keep making $12 a print issue and whatever crazy amount they charge for online. Come to us! not them. you need us to feel connected.

  • by todd3834 on 8/17/23, 2:11 PM

    Wow if I didn’t use the app every day I’d stay totally clear of it after reading these quotes right from the beginning of the article. This really doesn’t represent my experience at all. Am I alone or has the experience actually improved? I don’t follow people who are toxic because I don’t enjoy their content. It’s mostly software engineers and the #buildinpublic community and it’s a beautiful place with them.

    What has changed that has made the platform worse? It feels subjectively better in my experience.

    > designed to steal market share from Twitter, which continues to struggle under the leadership of Elon Musk

    > interested in a less angry place for conversations.”

    > interested in having a platform that is sanely run.”

  • by Covzire on 8/17/23, 2:39 PM

    Free speech is a fundamental human right.

  • by m3kw9 on 8/17/23, 2:31 PM

    People needed a new twitter because they hate Elon, which is just another fad. They eventually learn to ignore his antics and just enjoy everyone else’s tweets. They always come back. Just check out Threads timing, it coincides with max Elon hate, can’t be more clear.