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 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 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 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.
in fact i’m actually a pretty good example of this: several politicians and reasonably prominent progressive figures have/had followed me on twitter just because i make interesting posts sometimes and give them useful information they don’t have. i can’t really think of another space i’d have been able to do that in, and you can sometimes do it with very important or influential people in a way that’s just not true of any other place online.
There is nothing inherent about Twitter that makes it such beyond the network effect. Their dominance is transient. Investing a bit of time in developing networks now will pay off when they mature.
Exactly; Twitter and all the rest of the commercial social media sites trap a bunch of people who are all trying to get money out of each other, convinced that if they aren’t there and part of the ongoing spectacle, they’re missing out on business. Everyone else is there just to be a mark. Money pulls the strings and the puppets lurch about.
Whatever professional interests one has in it, I don’t think there are many valid human reasons.
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.
I wish artists wouldn’t use Twitter, it might be convenient for them but it’s absolutely abysmal for the users, it’s impossible to do any kind of searching as is very easy on boorus.
Most of my twitter engagement comes from links on reddit funny enough (usually sports related). There’s still a few people im interested in following as well so i’ll poke my head in here and there. But yeah i certainly don’t blame people for leaving the platform entirely. I just try to steer clear of the toxic stuff (which is very tough if you spend longer than 5 minutes on it)
I left back in 2018 because using it on a regular basis is like taking a chainsaw to your brain. I only keep my account in order to keep track of a handful of nsfw artists, and even a lot of them moved back to old Web 2.0 infrastructure
I remember around Novemeber trying to get my friends to use other platfrom but Twitter as I removed my account, made twitter account only to talk to them because their too lazy to even just use Discord… it just so damn annoying
Wait, you can’t call, text, email, chat your friends?
Their my internet friends if that makes sense. Also, I don’t like to give out my something like my email or phone number unless I know people enough or at least would see them. Most them are in America so seeing them is slim. (I’m British)
You have to shout it publicly across the internet?
No, I can DM Them and it what I mostly did to keep in contract with them.
Ahhh, Internet Friends. I guess I was lucky enough to never be on Twitter, and honestly, can’t figure out how to have enough interaction with anyone on Mastadon to become friends with them. Old school forums and Discord seem to work better for me for that. Too bad they’re too lazy.
As someone who has been the admin for a lot of email servers over the years and currently relies on it for certain things, email is an outdated mode of communication.
There still isn’t a great competitor for access to certain groups that I followed on Twitter (i.e. legal analysts and real time local news). Thankfully, many of them have migrated to Mastodon, but there is still a bit of a gap and a lot of people are still pointing back to Twitter. I blame inertia more than anything for those groups remaining and it will take some more time for them to fall off of the platform.
That all said, I left the platform after Musk started banning journalists and the flight tracker and I’ve not really missed it at all.
Exactly, I still use twitter because it is the best news aggregator for me personally. There is no other site where I can see updates from my favorite artists, authors, content creators, game companies… and it’s all neat in one place with recommendations for similar content actually making some sense.
If you block politics and don’t engage in the social aspect of it, twitter is a very useful tool. Nothing else comes close unfortunately, mastodon doesn’t have anyone, tumblr has a few people and reddit is just second-hand news.
I hope it crashes and burns just so people actually move somewhere else, but that hasn’t happened yet.
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 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.
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’ve had a fairly good experience with Mastodon & bird.makeup for reading accounts still at Twitter.
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 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.
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.
in fact i’m actually a pretty good example of this: several politicians and reasonably prominent progressive figures have/had followed me on twitter just because i make interesting posts sometimes and give them useful information they don’t have. i can’t really think of another space i’d have been able to do that in, and you can sometimes do it with very important or influential people in a way that’s just not true of any other place online.
There is nothing inherent about Twitter that makes it such beyond the network effect. Their dominance is transient. Investing a bit of time in developing networks now will pay off when they mature.
Exactly; Twitter and all the rest of the commercial social media sites trap a bunch of people who are all trying to get money out of each other, convinced that if they aren’t there and part of the ongoing spectacle, they’re missing out on business. Everyone else is there just to be a mark. Money pulls the strings and the puppets lurch about.
Whatever professional interests one has in it, I don’t think there are many valid human reasons.
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.
I wish artists wouldn’t use Twitter, it might be convenient for them but it’s absolutely abysmal for the users, it’s impossible to do any kind of searching as is very easy on boorus.
Most of my twitter engagement comes from links on reddit funny enough (usually sports related). There’s still a few people im interested in following as well so i’ll poke my head in here and there. But yeah i certainly don’t blame people for leaving the platform entirely. I just try to steer clear of the toxic stuff (which is very tough if you spend longer than 5 minutes on it)
I left back in 2018 because using it on a regular basis is like taking a chainsaw to your brain. I only keep my account in order to keep track of a handful of nsfw artists, and even a lot of them moved back to old Web 2.0 infrastructure
I remember around Novemeber trying to get my friends to use other platfrom but Twitter as I removed my account, made twitter account only to talk to them because their too lazy to even just use Discord… it just so damn annoying
Wait, you can’t call, text, email, chat your friends? You have to shout it publicly across the internet? Are you sure they’re your friends?
Their my internet friends if that makes sense. Also, I don’t like to give out my something like my email or phone number unless I know people enough or at least would see them. Most them are in America so seeing them is slim. (I’m British)
No, I can DM Them and it what I mostly did to keep in contract with them.
Yeah, their just lazy at best…
Ahhh, Internet Friends. I guess I was lucky enough to never be on Twitter, and honestly, can’t figure out how to have enough interaction with anyone on Mastadon to become friends with them. Old school forums and Discord seem to work better for me for that. Too bad they’re too lazy.
I can’t remember the last time i seriously sent an email to someone outside of work
As someone who has been the admin for a lot of email servers over the years and currently relies on it for certain things, email is an outdated mode of communication.
There still isn’t a great competitor for access to certain groups that I followed on Twitter (i.e. legal analysts and real time local news). Thankfully, many of them have migrated to Mastodon, but there is still a bit of a gap and a lot of people are still pointing back to Twitter. I blame inertia more than anything for those groups remaining and it will take some more time for them to fall off of the platform.
That all said, I left the platform after Musk started banning journalists and the flight tracker and I’ve not really missed it at all.
Exactly, I still use twitter because it is the best news aggregator for me personally. There is no other site where I can see updates from my favorite artists, authors, content creators, game companies… and it’s all neat in one place with recommendations for similar content actually making some sense.
If you block politics and don’t engage in the social aspect of it, twitter is a very useful tool. Nothing else comes close unfortunately, mastodon doesn’t have anyone, tumblr has a few people and reddit is just second-hand news.
I hope it crashes and burns just so people actually move somewhere else, but that hasn’t happened yet.