from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?

by kgraves on 1/20/24, 10:21 PM with 18 comments

• by hax0ron3 on 1/20/24, 10:39 PM

  From my perspective, Twitter is better than it used to be - it now seems more dynamic with more of a "Wild West" feel than it used to have, and it seems to have more diversity of political opinions than it used to have. On the other hand, I've heard that some advertisers have pulled out and I don't know how Twitter has weathered that storm.

• by tentacleuno on 1/20/24, 10:32 PM

  > All the while X is doing all the worst things possible to destroy their own platform, yet it is still up and running somehow and the X competitors imploded in the process.

  The spam on Twitter is nigh on unbearable -- I find myself the subject of a constant barrage of crypto mention farming spam, and paid-for ads with women in very suggestive poses.

  It almost seems like Elon has turned the spam filter off completely -- I repeatedly see accounts with 300+ posts, each mentioning 15 people with crypto messaging (all in the space of an hour). There is absolutely no way such behaviour wouldn't flag anti-spam on any other fucking platform.

• by Psillisp on 1/20/24, 10:44 PM

  Stopped using Twitter. Realized it didn’t merit replacing.

• by sidibe on 1/20/24, 10:47 PM

  The others probably shut down because the business looked doomed and unsustainable. Elon can afford to keep it running for just pride for a while with massive losses which they are probably incurring from their debt and advertising drop

• by delichon on 1/20/24, 11:15 PM

  It's this simple: Twitter is where most of the people I want to follow are. When they move on I may well follow them there. I did stop going there for a few years, found that I missed them and went back. With the Control Panel for Twitter extension all I see is just what I asked for, no ads, no random hot takes. And that makes for a very information dense news break that I look forward to once a day.

  I'm an invisible Norm sitting at the bar in Cheers, except the place is full of many of the smartest, wittiest people I know of. You don't replicate that by just building another bar.

• by acdha on 1/20/24, 10:48 PM

  There’s a lot of inertia to a social network and Twitter had high mindshare in some key groups: journalists, celebrities, politicians, authors, academics, musicians, government agencies, etc. A lot of people use Twitter _less_ than they used to but still come back, especially for things like local news or a major event like the wars in Ukraine or Israel.

  I do think the criticism of Mastodon is wrong, related to the previous point. It’s not that it’s hostile to non-tech folks but that it has the usual problems of a decentralized system: if you join, you will likely have problems finding people to follow. That’s no longer as hard as it used to be but I think that’s the strongest thing pulling people back to Twitter. It also seems to be softening as more people join Mastodon / Threads, and some organizations are putting out official servers because X has reminded them of the benefits of controlling their own presence where they can be absolutely certain their posts will not be displayed with literal Nazi ads.

• by mattl on 1/20/24, 10:28 PM

  Bluesky is growing and scaling itself quite nicely. Around 3 million users now, I think.

  A lot of non-tech folk are using it and the small team is doing seemingly weekly updates.

• by vba616 on 1/21/24, 2:55 AM

  Who are you asking?

  Are you asking the people who quit logging in and assume it's dead but haven't seen for themselves?

  Or are you asking the people who will pop up and say they're still there and it's better than ever?

  Do you expect group "B" to tempt group "A" to log in again?

• by thruway516 on 1/20/24, 11:05 PM

  When a site is as entrenched in the culture as twitter/x is it usually takes a loooong time to die - craigslist, yahoo mail are still very much around. That said Id be curious to know what the numbers are. Elon seems to be experimenting and he might yet pull this off

• by robertheadley on 1/20/24, 11:23 PM

  I have bases set up on Bluesky and Threads etc for when Twitter does implode, but in the meantime, the network is still valuable.

  There is something to be said about seeing the downfall of a company or service in real time.

• by ipaddr on 1/20/24, 10:35 PM

  People are not looking for a new twitter even if people leave twitter.

• by bediger4000 on 1/20/24, 10:34 PM

  I figured Twitter would die about last April, after firing/throwing away/laying off so much staff. I'm as much in the dark as you are.

  I did return to Twitter this last fall, so as to be able to look at Tweets that The Grugq has in his daily newsletter, after about a years' absence. I found the amount of advertising, scammy advertising, literal boner juice ads, overwhelming. Despite his ranting and raving, Elon hasn't solved the bot problem, it appears there's more bots than ever.

  I think that right now Twitter exists to squeeze the last little bit of value from advertisers.

• by jprd on 1/20/24, 10:54 PM

  Inertia