Unpopular opinion: I think twitter as a platform is noticable better now, longer tweets, better media quality, a reverse cronological timeline that sticks, less adds, verification accessible to more people and the beginnings of transparency around the algorithm.
What is worse, is the users. The Elon hate overshadows any rational discussion of the platform.
Twitter IMO was at a local maximum and needed shaking up, and with time more and more improvements will come.
> I think twitter as a platform is noticable better now, longer tweets, better media quality, a reverse cronological timeline that sticks, less adds, verification accessible to more people and the beginnings of transparency around the algorithm.
Current Twitter:
(1) Does not have a reverse chronological feed (neither For You nor Following are ordered that way),
(2) Has greater ad density (they may have fewer unique advertisers and/or fewer ad dollars, but that’s…not the same thing), [unless the delta between Blue and regular Twitter is undersold, even the Blue has greater ad density than old free Twitter]
(I disagree with a number of your subjective judgements, too, but its not worth discussing them.)
I think you are right in some ways. The site didn't crash and burn like everyone was predicting. It's still snappy, and has more features now. What gets me is the never ending stream of childish decisions, stuff like replacing the logo with Dogecoin, messing up the blue tick, banning linking certain major domains, and other stuff.
> The site didn’t crash and burn like everyone was predicting.
“Everyone” wasn’t predicting that. A large number of people were predicting a high probability (but not necessarily immediate or catastrophic effect) of service degradation from the mass of knowledge that was jettisoned – and this has manifested and continues to – and some people who saw that criticism and didn’t understand it relayed it as immediate immediate demise, which hasn’t.
I recommend visiting reddit.com/r/twitter to see the number of people who can't log into their account for various BS reasons and can't reach anyone for support.
To be fair, r/facebook and r/instagram are equally as bad. I'm not sure there's a social media site that has good support for end users (not advertisers).
Stuff most people don't notice, but immediately became better after the acquisition:
Since I'm never ever logged into twitter, there before Elon I could only read about one tweet before getting a fullscreen popup telling me to login to view more. Within weeks of Elon, that became less intrusive, and I think is even better now. It's one of these obvious things that unfortunately is very commonplace in modern software: "Make the UX terrible for users that don't directly add revenue."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think Twitter Blue did anything to verify that you are who you say you are beyond confirming that you can spend $8/month.
Verification was meant to, you know, verify people.
Instead of the blue checkmark for verification it's been replaced with gold (for companies) and sliver checkmarks (for governments/politicians). And an individual can link his account with an verified organization (like the CEO of Binance).
I think it's better than the old system where people would try to bribe their way or put out fake press releases to obtain notoriety for a bluecheck. Now the bluecheck is more of a "I'm less likely to be a bot" signifier.
I don't know what verification twitter does, but I do know that the verification took longer than the feature unlock. I'm sure their process could be improved but its early days. My unsubstantiated prediction is that in 6 months other social networks, especially Instagram and FB, will be absolutely flooded with AI generated content, and at that point 8$ will make a big difference.
Agreed. Verification was the biggest thing for me - it being inaccessible to those who weren't "highly regarded" or a notable feature made it useless to me. Now its easy to see who is engaged and have their foot put forward in the platform, and who are just using it as another simple social media site.
> Now its easy to see who is engaged and have their foot put forward in the platform, and who are just using it as another simple social media site.
I’m interested to hear how this information is helpful to you. Let’s say you find two artists who are posting similar content, but one of them pays for a Twitter Blue subscription. How does that affect how your perception of their posts? Do you value the posts of the Twitter Blue subscriber more? If so, why?
I'd like to draw a comparison to the book "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" by Laurence Sterne.
For example, Sterne writes in his novel, "Writing, when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation." This quote highlights the importance of engaging and thoughtful communication, which is a value that can be extended to the world of social media.
Subscribing to Twitter Blue signifies a user's commitment to engaging more deeply with the platform and fostering thoughtful conversations. Like how I invested their my in uncovering the book's complexities and wit, Twitter Blue subscribers put in the effort to discover and interact with unique and thought-provoking content and their follower base.
> Subscribing to Twitter Blue signifies a user's commitment to engaging more deeply with the platform and fostering thoughtful conversations.
Firstly, this hasn’t been my impression of Twitter Blue subscribers so far, so I’m curious why you think this. Are you saying that the act of paying for the service signifies a user’s commitment to engaging in thoughtful conversation? In that case, would you say Twitter Blue subscribers are in general more thoughtful than Hacker News members, who aren’t paying a fee?
Also, I’d still like to know the answer to my original question. You said that the blue checkmark is now a useful signal to you, where it wasn’t before. I’m interested in how seeing blue check marks next to people’s names affects the way you use Twitter.
> Let’s say you find two artists who are posting similar content, but one of them pays for a Twitter Blue subscription. How does that affect your perception of their posts? Do you value the posts of the Twitter Blue subscriber more?
To me, all it says is that one of them paid for a Twitter Blue subscription, which could have been for myriad reasons. The most likely one being more reach on one’s posts.
There is verification, its just no longer tied to the blue check (except for the legacies, which have been devalued by being merged with the “paid for Twitter” checks and will soon be eliminated entirely.) There are a number of other flair icons that have been adopted to serve the verification function that the blue check used to serve because the blue check no longer does, like the yellow check for verified brands, the miniature square version of the Presidential Seal that Obama has after and in addition to the blue check, and I think some others.
I never spent much time on Twitter as a user (outside several years ago) and I found the medium and when I did most users intolerable pretty much the whole time. I tried it a few times now and then, still terrible experience.
After a while I just felt like the medium and the feedback loop / perverse incentives provided was all broken.
It's also noticeably faster now. Even though I don't like Elon cause he punches down, Twitter really was just languishing there and is much better now.
It is only an unpopular opinion if you are in a weird echo chamber. Most people, even Twitter users, don't even have an opinion and do not care.
Edit: Funny how threads that screech Elon bad are not flagged and are plentiful and yet this one is flagged for some mysterious reason. Keep jumping the shark HN.
> Funny how threads that screech Elon bad are not flagged and are plentiful and yet this one is flagged for some mysterious reason. Keep jumping the shark HN
Yep. I use an RSS reader and before I click in to a thread I can not see if it is flagged, but I bet I could predict with pretty good accuracy which ones will be when I arrive inside of HN. I actually thought this one would be…and was right.
It’s not like he has a choice as far as that statement goes or that Jack would say he doesn’t trust Elon at that point…
I don’t know what we’re supposed to think of these kinds of statements, or what these people getting a ton of money to make a complement expect us to believe.
I once ran into an executive and I was tired from working the night shift and then going to an all hands meeting. He asked me what I thought of the meeting and I was honest that I really don’t care what they say at those meetings because if it wasn’t “a great time to work here” they wouldn’t tell me at that meeting. To the executive’s credit he said “Yeah that’s true.”.
This is why I don't get why people hold the elite to their word like normal non-99.99% people.
People get to elite level status because their words and kaleidoscope of apparent intentions, beliefs and character are optimized to move themselves upwards. They don't need to be engineers, designers, particularly good product people or even fun to work with. All they need is to be among the best playing the great game at the highest level. It's no different than the way politicians or gang leaders operate.
So let's say you wanted to get to a decentralized alternative to Twitter--which Jack Dorsey would claim to have wanted for a long time--but you had this giant impediment: Twitter exists, and it just isn't that bad... like, it isn't great, and maybe it is barely even good, but it is just totally reasonable enough that a lot of people use it, and so you can't really even enter that market because people are all insisting that Twitter is fine and your decentralized thing is a bit too awkward or a bit too confusing or whatever.
Now, one thing you could do is what I have spent some time doing: try to point out that a centralized business is broken by its very nature, and go on about wasting your life trying to educate people that we all should not trust such systems because, at the end of the day, even if you absolutely love the people behind such a product, one day people you do not like will buy it and kill it off. Despite collecting a ton of examples--if you are old enough to remember the LiveJournal era, did you pay attention to when it finally got sold to a Russian company, for example?--the reality is that even people who go see such a talk and agree go off and tweet about it on Twitter (and like, having given that talk, you know where I would tell people about it? well, I was forced to do so on Twitter a lot; I avoid what I can, but I have to go where people are or I am alone in the woods.)
So, with Twitter as it existed being a losing situation, you have two hopes: 1) that a new person can come in and fix it, by dismantling what made it so valuable to shareholders... but like, are they really going to do that? probably not; but I mean... maybe they could? If someone was going to do that, I guess I was willing to believe that Elon might do it for some weird reason? I dunno. I actually had at least some hope that it might go in this direction... but even if he did, I still wouldn't have been happy until "I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company".
But like, Twitter as a company before was not OK to anyone who believes in decentralization, which this tweet claims very strongly to do; so you have to remember that and then ask if there was any solution you think had even more of a chance than Elon to pull that off, and frankly I just don't see it: I don't see any way to go from what Twitter was to what Twitter should be... which is gone... oh... right ;P.
And hence we get to the other hope to fix Twitter: 2) you just buy it and kill it. Now, there are other ways to do this: we could beg Yahoo to buy it--they have an amazing track record for this purpose--but they aren't really in a position to do that anymore; Google buying it would almost certainly kill it, but I imagine they don't see a reason to, as they can always just build their own products to kill :(. So, we are stuck with Twitter until someone else comes in to buy it and kill it... but like, the risk is that they come in and then just run it without either fixing it or breaking it... that would suck!
What we want is someone who will somehow either dismantle Twitter and make it a free and open platform protocol or, if they fail to, for whatever reason--including malice or greed!!--that the result will die the swiftest possible death imaginable, as remember: we absolutely need to get rid of Twitter to replace it with something decentralized. And, you know what? This went great for Jack. A ton of people have left Twitter, more people are hating it every day, the narrative has finally turned into one of Twitter as a centralized scourge, and Jack is thereby getting to re-do Twitter: he has launched Blue Sky, and people actually care now in a way they simply did not years ago. (And like, if you believe his vision, and not his ego, a ton of people on Mastadon is also amazing!)
> In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company.
So, OK: let's go with that.
> Solving for the problem of it being a company however...
I am loving how vague this is.
> ...Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.
Well, wow: mission accomplished (lol). Honestly, I feel like this might go down as one of the most ironically accurate assessments ever made (whether or not Jack understood any of this going in).
What is worse, is the users. The Elon hate overshadows any rational discussion of the platform.
Twitter IMO was at a local maximum and needed shaking up, and with time more and more improvements will come.