[CyberRabbi]

Many alternatives exist but none reach critical mass because twitter has buy in from the major media outlets and the journalists they employ. Unlike other social networks that grew spontaneously, Twitter was effectively crowned.

Every twitter clone that tries to compete without first having the approval of the major media outlets will either be publicly ignored, belittled, or outright attacked.

[rtpg]

This is a very conspiratorial vision of things.

Really, it's just that social networks work by having a lot of people, and lots of people are on Twitter because other people are on Twitter (I think there's an audience thing as well).

Though, to your point, I think Twitter has outsized influence for the same reason Google Reader did: loud nerds and journalists were always using it. Though now the politicians using it probably count for a lot too

[CyberRabbi]

I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory to acknowledge that the exposure twitter got from media outlets universally promoting their twitter handles next to their core brands had a significant impact on twitters early growth, as well as a reinforcing effect to this day. Not every small social network gets that type of treatment.

Facebook did not grow this way, even though their relationship with the media is nearly indistinguishable from twitter’s today.

[useragent86]

> This is a very conspiratorial vision of things.

History is full of conspiracies.

> Really, it's just that social networks work by having a lot of people, and lots of people are on Twitter because other people are on Twitter (I think there's an audience thing as well).

The network effect is real, but it is not the only effect. Twitter and other tech giants now think that their role is to protect the world from information they deem wrong. As well, prominent people in media and politics are urging them to take on that role more expansively. Naturally, therefore, they will oppose competitors whose distinguishing feature is to have less or no censorship.

The media establishment does not look kindly upon those who seek to deconstruct it.

[sofixa]

> The network effect is real, but it is not the only effect. Twitter and other tech giants now think that their role is to protect the world from information they deem wrong

Do you have any examples of anything "they" "deemed wrong" which wasn't factually wrong? And not "alternative facts" bullshit, regular, proven facts.

[useragent86]

If you care about the truth, it's your responsibility to find it, not to demand that I feed it to you. You are on the Internet, after all, and since DNS has yet to be censored, you can still seek alternative sources.

Now, you place the burden of proof on me, assuming that Twitter is in the right by censoring information and demanding that I prove that their censorship is wrong. But why don't you place the burden of proof on Twitter? Why do you apologize for censorship?

In your other comments, you say that "Only China can stop China," and you say that the U.S. mustn't respond to cyber attacks by China, Russia, and Iran, or those nations might escalate, so we must look the other way when these nations infiltrate and attack us.

One wonders what you're after.

[betwixthewires]

When it comes to publishing, it doesn't matter where you publish, only that you can put your words out there. If someone has a web browser they can read what you say. The only thing that suffers is engagement, which you'll have a hard time getting regardless what website you use to publish if you're just starting out. But engagement is either meaningful or noise, and meaningful engagement comes from thoughtful words, not the size of the website.

So don't worry about critical mass. Pick where you want to publish based on what is important to you.

I almost exclusively use FOSS, federated networks to publish my thoughts, the only exception being this site. I engage here pretty often because I like the quality of the discussion and the rule of only contributing if you have something constructive to contribute, but ideally this website wouldn't be a silo.

[CyberRabbi]

I made no judgments on the value or importance of critical mass.

Critical mass seems important for exposure and personally I don’t think exposure is important unless you are seeking to maximize something that comes from exposure, usually it’s profit.

My comment was mainly to bring attention to what I consider the primary causal factor behind twitter’s critical mass.

[thinkingemote]

Twitter got popular because early adopters used it, then celebrities, then Oprah and then media journalists and then Arab Spring and then news journalists and then early adopters left.

[oarsinsync]

Do you have more information and / or evidence of this? I was an early Twitter user (2008) and I don’t recall things playing out this way. I’m not suggesting you’re wrong, and it’s entirely possible I was (am?) being naive about how things played out and would love to learn more.

[glenngillen]

My recollection matches yours. Twitter didn’t have an incumbent to overcome (insofar it was, and largely continues to be, complimentary to the other social networks). The early days of Twitter were a wasteland as far as old media engagement is concerned. It was dominated by TechCrunch, Scoble, etc.

And then in 2008 it ramped up for a multitude of reasons. A politician nobody had heard of somehow managed to mobilise a lot of support via a tech platform many hadn’t heard of, and get to a point where it looked like he had a legitimate shot at becoming US President. By early 2009 it was popular enough that Facebook updated their timeline to try and combat it, everyone was talking about their growth, and Ashton Kutcher was goading CNN into a competition to be the first account on the platform to have 1M followers (he was the first btw).

Old media was late to the game here and had to play catch up to stay relevant. I suspect that was also the tipping point though which changed journalism forever into this clickbait and eyeball driven economy. If anything Twitter inadvertently controlled old media, not the other way.

[Tipewryter]

Can you name some alternatives? I am not aware of any.

Please note that I explicitly said "centralized". Because decentralized solutions like Mastodon have not resulted in viable alternatives for the average user so far.

[betwixthewires]

ActivityPub and the Fediverse of which Mastodon is part have absolutely resulted in viable alternatives. I use the network for probably 90% of my online social interaction. It is far superior to any alternative I've found so far, mainly because I can publish freely, cannot be banned from the network, nobody has to have an account to see what I say, and it is actually a network, not a website calling itself a network. I can think of no way to reach millions of people that is less restrictive than this network.

[GoblinSlayer]

What is the difference? Centralization applies only to moderation policy.

[CyberRabbi]

Minds, gab, and Parler come to mind. There are certainly others.

[betwixthewires]

Parler is a no go for me partly because I don't like ideological monoculture, but mainly because users have to have an account to even see what you say. IMO this makes it worse than Twitter, you shouldn't publish your thoughts somewhere with conditions on who can see what you say.

I've never used Minds and dabbled with Gab when it first came online only to find that it is as noisy and worthless a place to engage as Twitter is, possibly moreso.

[aleister_777]

> users have to have an account to even see what you say

fwiw, I thought the same until recently but discovered they are visible with the following format:

https://parler.com/profile/[username]/posts

[Tipewryter]

Interesting.

Looking at Minds, I already see a big flaw: All posts are under the /newsfeed/ namespace.

So instead of

    /username/1234

your posts are here:

    /newsfeed/1234

I don't think users want to get "robbed" of their posts like this.

There also is no embed functionality. For Twitter type shoutouts it is absolutely vital that they can be embedded around the web.

[saagarjha]

Fun fact: the user part of a Twitter URL isn’t important. You can replace it with any other user.

[CyberRabbi]

Username in status url and “embedibility” are good features to have but i don’t think they are causal in determining whether or not an twitter clone reaches critical mass. Maybe they are though. You should build an alternative!

[pjc50]

The latter two are dominated by people who've managed to be too fascist for Twitter, which is quite a feat.

[CyberRabbi]

> Every twitter clone that tries to compete without first having the approval of the major media outlets will either be publicly ignored, belittled, or outright attacked.

You proved that point

[sofixa]

Is the person you're responding to wrong? You can't just slap a conspiracy label as if that somehow makes what they said wrong

[CyberRabbi]

Yes they are wrong. There’s no evidence that either of those platforms are dominated by fascists. The claim is as frivolous as the claim that HN is dominated by fascists.

[young_unixer]

How so?