Will there still be a board of directors at twitter or will MUSK be dictator
― | (Latham Green), Tuesday, 26 April 2022 23:04 (two years ago) link
I chose I will never quit even though I might quit someday. Elon buying Twitter didn't make me want to immediately leave, but I could imagine him running it into the ground. It's perfectly fine now and I'm on there a lot, following the news and my various personal interests. I actively mute anything that doesn't interest me or that I don't want to see, and I steer clear of personalities I outright despise.
― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Tuesday, 26 April 2022 23:10 (two years ago) link
elon hasn't bought it yet, deal will close in 3-6 months. so no point quitting now
― flopson, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 07:20 (two years ago) link
Chose will never quit but depending on what changes get brought in I might. Change of ownership by itself not enough for me, tech giants always owned by horrible people.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 09:51 (two years ago) link
I don't see the point of treating the overpriced battery on wheels man as an exceptional scumbag, they're all horrible.
― calzino, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 10:05 (two years ago) link
Stopped using Twitter in late 2016, exactly 10 years to the day after I joined. Didn't delete my account, but basically unfollowed everyone. Occasionally use it when I want to find something out in real-time, or to read a thread which someone has linked to here. Don't miss it at all.
― mike t-diva, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 10:13 (two years ago) link
Deleted my account 3 weeks or so before Musk joined the board. Was no longer enjoyable or useful to me.
Agree with Calzino that Musk isn't more pernicious than other billionaires. For those who plan to stick with Twitter his plans to loosen the moderation of it are probably still troubling, tho.
― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 11:02 (two years ago) link
I like it, I mainly just follow all the retro gaming people and it's all good fun. I follow some comedians too, but have generally found that I only enjoy Blain Capatch stuff. Hopefully whatever happens once the deal is in won't affect my usage, we'll see.
― Ste, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 11:07 (two years ago) link
Musk is worse/worst on Twitter due to the performative petulance in recent years even if that's mostly 'just' insults against others. But this is pretty much just the 'is Trump the figurehead worse than countless lower profile Republicans? Actually...' argument.
― nashwan, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 12:07 (two years ago) link
Worse no, more annoying yes. But annoyance is a valid reason to quit a social network, ofc.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 12:42 (two years ago) link
No plans to quit. I'm rarely pissed off by content.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 12:47 (two years ago) link
twitter is a website for lazy narcissists who are wrong about everything
my running assessment has been "Twitter encourages psychological projection to a point that it feels like that's all the site does"
― a legible shriek (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 13:03 (two years ago) link
Never signed in but read it. No ads!!!
― DAMAGED by Black Flat (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 13:06 (two years ago) link
Twitter can’t be all bad, it has @Cats of Yore
― DAMAGED by Black Flat (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 13:07 (two years ago) link
and fantastic one joke accounts like politicians hair on football managers
― calzino, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 13:09 (two years ago) link
it was all downhill after Your Aunt Diane stopped tweeting in 2012
https://twitter.com/YourAuntDiane
― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 13:24 (two years ago) link
I agree tech company owners are universally despicable, but this was the last major thing I read about Musk so I think there's a case to be made that he's even on the bad side of the tech billionaire spectrum: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-25/black-tesla-employees-fremont-plant-racism-california-lawsuit
otoh, I still have an IG account and I don't think Elon has facilitated a genocide yet, I'm typing this on a macbook etc.
― rob, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 13:46 (two years ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/IP36jUH.jpg
― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 13:59 (two years ago) link
the chaff to wheat ratio on twitter is still too high though better obv than FB (actually FB has gotten better in this regard as I've unfollowed a million things and only look at posts from people I know, but I'm tired of the platform and UI now). that said, twitter has a unique ability to completely ruin my day so I'm going to stop looking at it so often. I avoided it for many years and only got really sucked in during the last year and a half.
― akm, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 14:02 (two years ago) link
Well ok but...twitter users are not the consumers of twitter products, which are advertising spots and user data. I don't really subscribe to this idea's most extreme versions—if you think of users as unpaid workers you have Terranova's "free labor"; if you prefer to think of them as the product being sold to the real consumers (advertisers) there's Smythe's "audience commodity"; or, popularly, "if the 'product' is free, you are the product." Those theories exclude a lot of what users get out of platforms & broadcast media, but nonetheless it's a fact that user-generated content creates the platform's value, so I don't think it's ridiculous to think about one's participation in social media as different from needing to consume goods and services under capitalism.
― rob, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 14:58 (two years ago) link
I'd say that a very small percentage of tweets are creating any value
― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 15:16 (two years ago) link
sorry, I can't tell if that's just a joek or not
― rob, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 15:21 (two years ago) link
Only sort of. There are something like 500 million tweets per day, and the number of them that achieve high engagement, or are even read by another human, has to be pretty small. So unless you are a power tweeter you are only adding value in a butterfly-flapping-wings sense.
― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 16:59 (two years ago) link
For me its as simple as weighing the utility of the site against my personal dislike of the oligarch in charge, and as it stands these days Prime Video continues to be good for my brain where Twitter is a dopamine addiction calibrated to piss me off between good jokes and obscure political pals
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 17:34 (two years ago) link
xpAh ok got it. So I perhaps unhelpfully combined two points:
1) Users create all the content on Twitter. If the users don't tweet, no one will visit twitter.com. This is the "free labor" theory* more or less: that the unwaged labor of tweeting is what creates the bulk of the company's value. It is true that much/most of this content goes essentially unseen, which is one reason likening it to wage labor isn't totally convincing, even apart from the issue of how users understand their own behavior on the network (generally speaking: not as labor). But at any rate, it's still significant that Twitter doesn't employ people to create content or even license it from elsewhere—compare to e.g., Netflix or Spotify—they get it for free from their users.
* tbf Terranova's theory predates the rise of social media and was more applied to people doing things like open-source software development, which more clearly resembles wage labor. It was also applied to blogging (I can't remember if she did that or people picked up on it from her), which also bears a resemblance to the waged labor of media production. OTOH media workers are often expected to tweet as part of their job responsibilities, so some of these lines get murky fast and that's not even mentioning influencers.
2) Users are the audience for all the content on twitter. Twitter sells this audience to advertisers and if you've ever played around with soc med advertiser tools, you'll know this isn't a metaphor, you can get quite specific with demographic targeting. Without users looking at tweets, there is no audience to sell. For advertising, it doesn't really matter which tweets users see, you just need them to pay attention to their feed / the site. And even if you never tweet or like a tweet or even make an account, you will still be sold to advertisers. Plus your behavioral data is commoditized, and, thanks to that, every single tweet holds some value even if no user sees or engages with it.
Sorry if this is all rather 'splainy; I don't have a good sense of how much non-academic people care about this stuff.
― rob, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 17:46 (two years ago) link
rob, have u read The Twittering Machine?
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 17:54 (two years ago) link
I have not! Would you recommend it? Seymour is the Lenin's Tomb guy, right?
― rob, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 18:02 (two years ago) link
yeah correct -- i quite liked it and there's a podcast called Our Regrettable Century hosted by a group of lefty burnouts that did a great three part series on it
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 18:06 (two years ago) link
thanking HOOS
― rob, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 18:08 (two years ago) link
this might be my first 'platform ditching' experiment. i feel like if i take the thing i really like about twitter (art account tweets) and make it more active research 'around the web' and in books on my part, it will be a more engaging and rewarding experience. i also have no professional reason to be on there and few followers. so it might actually take hold if i put in some effort. i guess i might miss being up on everything and having the occasional lol and trawling through random restaurant. but i think that stuff might be worth losing for the peace of mind, and also losing my login seems easier than unfollowing all of the annoying people. i never really understood the feeling of 'social media is a net drain on my life' until ca 2019-2020. like there was still an exciting or funny or engaging aspect to it up until that point. but i have a stronger feeling than ever that i need less of it. instagram for dj stuff and personal fb sounds manageable.
― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 18:13 (two years ago) link
i guess i don't have to completely avoid the site if i lose my login either, like i can still check brisk god videos if i'm bored and tired lol
― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 18:17 (two years ago) link
by 'lose my login' i think i mean deleting my account
― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 18:23 (two years ago) link
the site is really unusable if you don't have an account
(one of the few good things about twitter)
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 18:25 (two years ago) link
i deactivated.
― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 18:54 (two years ago) link
i also have no professional reason to be on there
See this was my mistake, putting all my eggs in DJ Twitter instead of DJ Instagram :)
― change display name (Jordan), Wednesday, 27 April 2022 18:57 (two years ago) link
perhaps the best solution to fixing Twitter is indeed to turn it off
― | (Latham Green), Sunday, 1 May 2022 20:42 (two years ago) link
i get most of the best parts of twitter (lit memes) when they show up on discord, and the worst parts of twitter (The Discourse, utter lack of healthy emotional boundaries) are a big part of, well, why i ghosted this site for like 20 months - just trying to learn how to interact with people in an emotionally healthy manner and shit.
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 1 May 2022 21:05 (two years ago) link
it’s good to see you back here :)
― Tracer Hand, Sunday, 1 May 2022 21:08 (two years ago) link
Kate !!!!
― budo jeru, Sunday, 1 May 2022 21:55 (two years ago) link
y'all are sweet, good to see you again :)
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 2 May 2022 05:07 (two years ago) link
@kate I read someone once saying Twitter was doomed because no one goes there to use it, it just gets repeated on other websites people do use.But maybe that was too dire a prediction
I actually had to get a Twitter account as part of a class I am taking but luckily I already had one
― | (Latham Green), Wednesday, 4 May 2022 13:41 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Monday, 9 May 2022 00:01 (two years ago) link
Ominous
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 9 May 2022 03:53 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Tuesday, 10 May 2022 00:01 (two years ago) link
Only 8 elon socks here
― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Tuesday, 10 May 2022 01:02 (two years ago) link
― flopson, Wednesday, April 27, 2022 3:20 AM (one week ago)
This is kind of where I landed. If Musk actually does any of the deranged stuff he's said he might do, I will delete.
I will say while I recognize the truth of "all company owners are scum," there is something esp galling about how Musk wouldn't just be the owner of twitter he'd also be its most prominent user. Like if every time you bought something on Amazon a little animated Bezos popped up saying "thanks dawg" I would be even more hardcore about avoiding it, or if the app icon for Instagram was Zuckerberg's quasi-human face I would delete it instantly
― rob, Tuesday, 10 May 2022 14:17 (two years ago) link
there should be fines on Twitter tbh. i want bad tweeters fined.
― Deez NFTs (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 10 May 2022 14:27 (two years ago) link
Elon's Regret
― | (Latham Green), Saturday, 6 August 2022 00:26 (two years ago) link
Trying to quit Twitter because it'll be 10 years for me at the end of this month and that feels too long
― jaymc, Saturday, 6 August 2022 03:59 (two years ago) link
I quit for like a year but went back. Made some changes though. Use different accounts now focused on different subject areas. So I can easily log out of a couple of them and still read about basketball. I also mute all replies and retweets, which cuts down on a lot of the low effort tweeting. I still leave quote tweets, but they are in a short leash. If it’s just people constantly dunking on others then I’ll either unfollow or mute. No hate follows.
― Jeff, Saturday, 6 August 2022 14:34 (two years ago) link
i signed up for post, haven't followed anyone yet, but the "posts" it's serving me make it seem like a parler or truth social for resistance libs lol
― comedy khadafi (voodoo chili), Monday, 19 December 2022 14:00 (one year ago) link
like, this was the first thing i saw when i logged in today: https://post.news/article/2J8SVsZ2IBvBJ2sXxIprQXFciTx
― comedy khadafi (voodoo chili), Monday, 19 December 2022 14:05 (one year ago) link
fucks sake.
― peace, man, Monday, 19 December 2022 14:07 (one year ago) link
lol get yer "You Don't Know Jack" trading cards here
― The Beatles were the first to popularize wokeism (President Keyes), Monday, 19 December 2022 15:14 (one year ago) link
mastodon is good imo
― slai gorgeous-alexander (m bison), Monday, 19 December 2022 16:10 (one year ago) link
Getting better fast too.
― stet, Monday, 19 December 2022 23:03 (one year ago) link
As soon as people on ilx start posting Mastodon links instead of tweets I’ll have to switch
― The Beatles were the first to popularize wokeism (President Keyes), Tuesday, 20 December 2022 01:16 (one year ago) link
Tweetshelf is no longer free :(
― jaymc, Wednesday, 8 March 2023 13:45 (one year ago) link
I think this is related to Twitter charging to access its API, so sites that are built on it need to create revenue stream.
― jaymc, Wednesday, 8 March 2023 13:48 (one year ago) link
Tiwtter app got cross at my never checking it anymore, started sending me random tweets it thought I might like, so I uninstalled it.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 8 March 2023 14:26 (one year ago) link
is it weird to have not quit but to have the platform essentially beg/dare you to every day?
― rob, Tuesday, 4 April 2023 19:25 (one year ago) link
Feel like this needs a do-over. I'm pretty sure I voted that I'd never quit, but I left months ago. I was hoping for some End Days of Twitter excitement until a final blowout but it's more just drawn-out and boring.
― emil.y, Wednesday, 5 April 2023 00:17 (one year ago) link
i still haven't quit. there are a handful of people / pubs i find valuable. and nice art bot accounts and stuff that are too good to let go of for me, too good of a time waste and a distraction. also stuff like my regional office of the national weather service, who also posts on facebook, but good luck getting updates on chron order there. i thought mastodon might do it for me but it was too much work :|
― ꙮ (map), Wednesday, 5 April 2023 00:24 (one year ago) link
Mastodon feels pretty similar to me. I don't quite understand people's issues with it beyond "I fear change". Having said that, I haven't got anything that feels like a community on there yet, but I put that down to me having run out of steam on most social media platforms - I didn't post much on twitter before I left and I haven't posted much on Mastodon, so there's no real reason for anyone to follow me if they don't already know me.
I keep thinking about joining tumblr for the lols, but I've thought about it for over a decade and never done it.
― emil.y, Wednesday, 5 April 2023 00:30 (one year ago) link
pubs i find valuable
Eh you can just call up for opening hours, no need to follow on social media.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 5 April 2023 09:05 (one year ago) link
― rob, Tuesday, 4 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink
Hate that dog, but I'm still not quitting.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 5 April 2023 11:47 (one year ago) link
Same. It's the only place where I feel some sense of community with other people who make a similar type of music. No idea if that also exists on Mastodon or how to find it tbh.
― change display name (Jordan), Wednesday, 5 April 2023 16:46 (one year ago) link
My huge problem with Mastodon is there's no search. I know that's a fundamental decision for them and it's not changing, but search on Twitter is hugely useful in so many ways. That's what makes it very difficult to discover/visit all those communities that you're not part of
― stet, Thursday, 6 April 2023 15:13 (one year ago) link
my bot host has had the plug pulled by twitter. it's as if 58,000 voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
After 8 years and 58440 bots... CBDQ has come to an end. Thank you to @GalaxyKate & to everyone who has made a bot. It's been a pleasure. pic.twitter.com/8C6gXzuRRX— v buckenham (@v21) April 6, 2023
― koogs, Thursday, 6 April 2023 15:44 (one year ago) link
Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions. The words “cis” or “cisgender” are considered slurs on this platform.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023
― serving bundt (sic), Wednesday, 21 June 2023 08:42 (one year ago) link
cool cool cool
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 21 June 2023 08:44 (one year ago) link
Great meeting you today @elonmusk! We had multifaceted conversations on issues ranging from energy to spirituality. https://t.co/r0mzwNbTyN pic.twitter.com/IVwOy5SlMV— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 21, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 21 June 2023 08:57 (one year ago) link