[always_imposter]

>Twitter was always a cancer

You know they don't literally mean that right? This joke is seriously getting tired imo. Twitter actually has an established space in discourse and it shapes conversations or used to shape conversations. It has literally helped people get resources during times of crisis, most recent event where twitter helped people real time was during Covid in 2021, here in India. People were exchanging info real time for oxygen cylinders and during this crisis they made a special section for it as well which updated very frequently so people could get help or give help. When our govt didn't do shit, Twitter helped.

There are many such examples, Twitter is(was) always at the fore front whenever there was some war/event happening and reporters preferred to post updates on twitter real time instead of their news boards.

You might not see value in it, but if it goes away, I doubt that space will be filled easily. Threads is for entertainment. I don't see any of the "threads" on that platform making to mainstream discourse.

Let's please stop making this tired argument.

Twitter is really important for humanity whether you believe it or not.

[talldayo]

Twitter shouldn't be privately owned. That's the problem - Jack Dorsey wasn't able to promise a non-censored town hall and neither was Musk. They are running a business that is inherently at-odds with the ideal of informing people. They can't make money just providing Twitter - as a business it doesn't work.

The utility Twitter provided isn't written-off, but it really shouldn't have happened on a for-profit advertising platform. What people are unwilling to accept is that Twitter was lightning in a bottle - it won't come back because everyone learned the lesson that it doesn't make money. You can either move onto a radical platform that tries to fix the original sin (eg. Mastodon/BlueSky/Nostr) or you can stick with the huddled masses that rely on a censored and monetized platform to speak freely online.

[ipaddr]

The radical platform alternatives still censor and often to the whims of a random person. It's like a reddit subreddit or wikipedia article: you are censored by the moods of the admin. They are privately owned.

[talldayo]

The solution is easy; host your own instance. Federated solutions let you put your money where your mouth is and host yourself to your own content. If what you have to say is considered useful, you'll be a viral figure in no time.

Allow-only instances won't show your content but chances are they won't show most content. These are hugboxy environments you'd probably not want to be around anyways (and they sure don't want to be around you).

Block-only instances will show your content as long as it doesn't piss them off. If you are being racist or posting illegal content, you're gonna get muted. They have absolutely no obligation to propagate your content if you're not going to reach bare-minimum decorum.

[Freedom2]

> If what you have to say is considered useful, you'll be a viral figure in no time.

The assumption that useful speech goes viral is incredibly misjudged.

[talldayo]

I can see how you'd think that if you've never used Mastodon.

[always_imposter]

> Jack Dorsey wasn't able to promise a non-censored town hall

I believe his version of twitter was the closest thing we could get to an "uncensored" twitter. Everything is relative. How do you run and sustain a platform where people who call for genocide are getting their voice amplified? And is that even legal? Like, the platform has to take responsibility if it isn't going to "censor" speech.

Freedom of speech shouldn't mean freedom of reach. Yeah, if you want to make some ill-taste racist jokes, you must be shadow banned so that unless people specifically search for your name, the platform shouldn't amplify their voice.

> it won't come back because everyone learned the lesson that it doesn't make money

How can anyone dismiss Twitter earning >$5B in revenue as something not viable? Dorsey's twitter had too many employees. IIRC, their personnel costs alone was something like a $1B. Why do you need such a big team? Why are you hiring so many people and running mini experiments in the company hoping that you can become facebook level money making machine?

Dorsey should have realized that they are never going to become facebook level rich and just stay content with what they have and grow modestly and layoff people. Keep working on your core features. You don't need to be the next facebook, you are already twitter, heck, you have your company's name as a noun in a dictionary. Reduce your costs and coast. Nothing wrong with that.

But you need to be content with yourself first to think about company's decisions like that.

What has happened with twitter is truly shameful and Dorsey got with the wrong people (that's what i believe happened since he rolled his old twitter equity into x(itter) equity).

[arromatic]

Why did dorsey left bsky for twitter again ?

[talldayo]

> I believe his version of twitter was the closest thing we could get to an "uncensored" twitter.

I mean... I don't agree with that, considering that BlueSky exists now. I never used either of Dorsey's social medias but I would argue BlueSky is fundamentally closer to uncensored than X or Twitter ever was.

> How can anyone dismiss Twitter earning >$5B in revenue as something not viable?

Because their expenditures were through the roof, and even running it on a skeleton team a-la X seems to be losing money hand over fist. Twitter could have contented themselves with lower revenue, but they'd have to redesign their product stack or find ways to make more money elsewhere. Both of those take time and burn goodwill with the community.

At the end of the day, as a lifelong outsider to Twitter, it's just an endlessly ironic fate for the site. I have no love for Elon Musk but I also don't see Jack Dorsey as some messianic genius. The dude sold out his site in his final years because he failed to operate it for a decade and couldn't force people onto his crypto bandwagon. He never tried to correct course on Twitter (instead funding BlueSky as a contingency) and basically left his userbase to suffer as a value-add to his stock package. When I hear people complain about how bad Twitter is I just imagine frogs sitting in a boiling pot asking why their legs are numb. Do we really have to go over this again?

[throw-the-towel]

Do you think another social network couldn't have filled this role? I don't know about India, but to me Twitter with its length limits seems to be the ultimate Outrage Generation Machine. Easily 99% of Twitter content I see is either ragebait or jokes, and there's only so many people good at joking.

[andrewinardeer]

If 99% of Twitter content you see is ragebait or jokes then isn't that on you for following accounts that post this type of stuff?

I've gotten enormous value from it from following accounts that post content I deem relevant to my interests.

Don't you view your timeline?

[throw-the-towel]

My claim is that the very structure of Twitter emphasizes that type of content, more than any other large social network. Whatever you or me see isn't very relevant, it's anecdata.

[andrewinardeer]

When the only way to interact with Twitter was via SMS (hence the 160 character limit), ragebait was basically non-existent.

Since the eternal September (prior to Musks' acquisition) the lowest common denominator has been getting lower by the year.

You have a point that blasting out a tweet which is limited to a low character count does lend itself to ragebait yet the volume of ragebait tweets, in my opinion, is also influenced by the current culture of the network (Musk) and the context of the times (election 4 weeks away).

[throw-the-towel]

Fair enough, thank you for your input.

[surgical_fire]

Twitter was always cancer. It was before Musk, and it still is. You just happened to like how this particular turd smelled before.

> Twitter is really important for humanity whether you believe it or not.

This may be true. But whatever it speaks about humanity, it is not very flattering.

[meiraleal]

> twitter helped people real time was during Covid in 2021

That's not twitter helping, that's people helping. If there were no social networks, this would still happen. Having a billionare controlling global speech isn't worth it in any way even if it brings punctual benefits like the ones you cited