[willio58]

The shear amount of floundering that twitter has done since Elon bought it is hilarious as a non-user. I do feel bad for the people who just like using twitter though, like every other week the checkmark means something different. I hear the trending tab is overrun with crypto spam now. Elon really knows how to shake up a company! And by shake up I mean destroy one step at a time.

[spaceman_2020]

For quite some time, crypto scams and fake airdrops were literally showing up under sponsored posts. There was a big (real) Arbitrum airdrop and for for days, I would see ads for a (fake) airdrop.

[giobox]

While I think the app and service has gotten much worse in several ways post-Elon, I do see way less crypto spam than before FWIW. The "For You" tab now actually sometimes even surfaces tweets I'm interested in too now.

Performance and general stability has absolutely fallen for me though, and the launch of the DeSantis campaign on Twitter was a technical embarrassment/disaster as far as I could tell.

[kentm]

For me, the Twitter Blue boost has really led to a general drop in quality. I find that Blue subscribers typically don't say valuable things and are some of the most uninteresting people on the app, and yet they get boosted right to the top.

[davidbarker]

My experience is the same. Look at any POTUS or White House tweet (or a tweet from any well-known left-of-centre account) and it's reply after reply full of vitriol and hate, all pushed to the top.

It's remarkable, and sad.

[tracker1]

To be fair, it's the same for any right-of-center account as well. The vitriolic are engaging with opposition as much as anyone. It definitely plays in both directions.

My own take, is I'd like to see the establishment sellouts pushed out at far greater and faster rates, even though I don't necessarily agree with many positions, I don't like the corporatist sellouts and most politicians reach that point within a single term of federal office. There are grassroots efforts in both D & R camps to do just that.

That doesn't even get into the deep establishment in terms of Military Industrial Complex or Pharma/Food revolving doors in place. It's kind of gross. It's honestly at a point, that even if I'm in favor of more Libertarian solutions, while others want Socialism, most can agree, the establishment needs to go first, then can debate on longer term reforms.

[giobox]

Agreed, this is a very fair point. I'm also sad at the voices that have been lost one way or another through this transition.

[tracker1]

I tend to prefer the "Following" tab for the most part... yeah, you may miss some tweets, but at least what I see are more of what/who I care to see.

[rsynnott]

This was inevitable, and anyone who had ever used social media could have told him that it was a _terrible_ idea. In general, people who have to pay for attention, almost by definition aren't worth paying attention to.

[iudqnolq]

My For You tab is excellent. But as to the rest I have to disagree. I get the same number of spam DMs, and I don't see better replies to big accounts. They are real people, but they're tiny follower and accounts who aren't relevant but paid for blue.

[chatmasta]

I agree the For You tab is quite good, and is certainly better than the "recommended" tab was pre-acquisition. I wouldn't normally like being a "reply guy," but the For You tab ensures that even with hardly any followers, I can get targeted engagement when posting a reply on an extremely niche subject like package.json exports or iptables. And in turn, the algorithm responds by showing me more of that content in the future. That's the sort of positive feedback loop I appreciate, and one that will encourage more people like me (< 200 followers) to engage with Twitter.

However, it also seems to interpret "hate viewing" as "high interest" in terms of engagement. Sometimes I'll look at an account just one time, often by searching for it, in order to see some Tweet that's in the news or generating controversy. And then a few days later I'll start seeing Tweets from similar accounts in the "for you" tab, which I definitely don't want to see.

On other websites with recommendation algorithms, like YouTube, I can avoid this effect by viewing ragebait content in an incognito window, effectively curating my algorithm by opting out of it for content I don't want affecting future recommendations. But I can't do that with Twitter, because the login wall requires authentication to view more than the top three replies to a tweet. I wish there were some way to give the algorithm more intentional feedback on its recommendations.

[chimeracoder]

> While I think the app and service has gotten much worse in several ways post-Elon, I do see way less crypto spam than before FWIW

Cryptocurrency spam has declined simply because the cryptocurrency markets have tanked.

Overall spam is way, way worse than before, and it's shockingly low-effort. My DMs are absolutely useless - just chock full of obvious bot accounts who want to "date" me and just need me to click a link first.

I used to get one of those every few months, rare enough that it would surprise me. Since December or so, I've been getting multiple every day.

EDIT: In the one minute it's been since I wrote this comment, I just received yet another.

[tracker1]

I just block any follows or messages from obvious bots... it's a low signal, but with enough doing the same, it's better. I do wish there was a separate "block spammer/scammer" button as well, as trying to report anything is just frustrating. VS blocking someone I find toxic to interact with imo, shouldn't negatively effect them nearly as much as an account that's a scammer/spammer.

[kgwxd]

Elon put a dogecoin logo in place of the twitter logo. It's the most obnoxious crypto spam imaginable next to projecting a logo of it on the moon. The reason for other crypto spam falling is because they're competitors. Same thing he did with substack.

[WalterBright]

> The shear amount of floundering

On the other hand, this looks to me like trying all sorts of things to see what will work.

[matsemann]

Most annoying thing is blue checks being boosted to the top of every thread. Especially since most blues in my replies are either scams or harassment. So I just hide all blues and tell them to pay me $8 to be visible, lol.

[rejectfinite]

For me, it's better.

They removed the annoying login pop-up.

I only interact with twitter using links from other platforms. I don't use the trending hashtags or search.

So for me, it's been better since Elon took over.

[mthoms]

I still see the popup when not logged in. Every time.

[snickerbockers]

>I hear the trending tab is overrun with crypto spam now

Wasn't that already a problem before he took over? I seem to recall Joe Biden hawking some crypto scam after Twitter's admin got catfished into giving a third party access to his account.

[olalonde]

He cut Twitter's expenses significantly while avoiding reliability issues (a feat that debunked several predictions by tech "experts" on HN about potential major outages) and while adding several new useful features. Admittedly, his decision to unban several controversial figures was debatable from a business standpoint, at least in the short term. However, this was not an oversight but a conscious decision, based on principles rather than profits.

Your impression is probably heavily biased by traditional media, who in general do not like him one bit.

[mthoms]

>his commitment to uphold freedom of speech over profits

For your consideration, here's some evidence to the contrary. Twitter now agrees to 80% of censorship requests from various governments vs 50% previously.

>Twitter’s acquiescence to autocratic or non-liberal regimes is not an exaggeration by critics of the social network. [...] Since Musk’s takeover, the company has received 971 requests from governments (compared to only 338 in the six-month period from October 2021 to April 2022), fully acceding to 808 of them and partially acceding to 154. In the year prior to Musk taking control, Twitter agreed to 50% of such requests, in line with the compliance rate indicated in the company’s last transparency report (none have been published since October 2022). Following the change of ownership, that figure has risen to 83%, according to the analysis of the data by the technology information portal Rest of World.

Source: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el...

[olalonde]

My understanding is that Elon's position is to defer to the law regarding speech. So it would make sense that censorship is increasing in some countries while decreasing in others. In the US, Twitter was previously censoring a lot of legal speech and I believe that's what mostly concerned him.

Edit: I perhaps used "free speech" a bit ambiguously in the previous comment. I edited it to "principles" to avoid causing more debate about semantics.

[mthoms]

It makes sense if he only cares about certain types of speech. Given he censors more overseas than previous Twitter leadership did (without getting banned) - it's really hard to argue he is motivated by principles rather than politics and money.

Furthermore, a person who is strongly principled on freedom of speech would not ban people he disagrees with. Yet, he's done that in spades. I mean come on. Can we just stop with this pretending?

[olalonde]

I can't say I have followed this enough to form a strong opinion, but let's say you are right, what would be an alternative motivation? Can we at least agree that this wasn't a decision driven purely by short-term profits? And can we agree that it was done at some personal cost? For example, his public image taking a big hit. Surely, Elon must have anticipated the impending backlash from both advertisers and mainstream media.

[mthoms]

We can certainly agree on that. I think the problem is that he's now motivated by ego above all else. Elon is... different.

[likeafox]

>However, this was not an oversight but a conscious decision, underscoring his commitment to uphold freedom of speech over profits.

Why did the same commitment to speech over profit not apply to his decision making when he filtered Substack, or Mastadon URLs?

[olalonde]

My understanding is that Elon is mainly interested in eliminating ideologically and politically motivated censorship. He has recently given an interview on what he calls the "woke mind virus"[0], in which he talks about his views on free speech. Banning links to a Twitter competitor would not necessarily be inconsistent with this objective.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFEaTk--tZo

[mthoms]

It's certainly not consistent with being a "free speech absolutist", which was the descriptor he gave himself.

[olalonde]

The first definition I found on "free speech absolutist":

> Free speech absolutists believe that any limitation on political speech is veering into dangerous territory. They believe that restricting free speech in any way, including curbing insulting or factually incorrect speech, means assigning gatekeepers who decide what can and cannot be expressed in public.

Twitter's censorship policy does seem to have moved in that direction in general.

But I grant you that the terms are a bit overloaded and it's not always clear what people mean by them.

PS: Edited "free speech" to "principles" since it was causing much debate about semantics.

[kibwen]

Twitter has been falling over during even moderate load this year, and completely crapped out last night during Musk's embarrassing soiree for Ron DeSantis. Musk is a bootlicking clown who deserves every bit of mockery he gets.

[olalonde]

Twitter didn't "completely" crap out. There was a slight hiccup when a Twitter Space event was delayed by 20 minutes as engineers worked to accommodate the unexpected load. But speaking from personal experience as a daily Twitter user, I've noticed no significant issues post-takeover.

This type of exaggeration perfectly illustrates the mainstream media's tendency to perpetuate misinformation about Twitter. It contributes to the false narrative that Elon's stewardship is 'destroying' Twitter, which is far from reality.

[kibwen]

Using "the mainstream media" as a bogeyman was tired 20 years ago, and it's even more tired these days. We can view Elon Musk's own depredations plainly on Twitter itself, with no "mainstream media" involved, and the evidence of Twitter's decline (that just so happens to correlate with Musk's takeover) can be observed directly on Twitter as well, with blue-checked right wing fruitcakes boosted to the top of every timeline, shrieking about trans people and "white replacement" in an attempt to foment violent hatred against the current crop of undesirables. But please, continue to delude yourself into thinking that "mainstream" media is the problem here.

[olalonde]

Considering your strong disagreement with Elon's stance on content moderation and free speech, might it be possible that your perception of Elon 'destroying' Twitter stems more from personal bias, or 'wishful thinking', rather than a balanced appraisal of the facts? It's hard to know for sure as an outsider, but it would personally surprise me a lot if Twitter was in fact dying.

[rejectfinite]

Would pre-elon Twitter have handled 500k in one Twitter space? :)

[kibwen]

Considering that Twitter's infrastructure team was gutted and all the current infrastructure is the work of pre-Elon Twitter: yes, by definition.