[dvt]

Curious as to why people think this (other than partisan trend-following). I've been on Twitter since 2009, and it's arguably in the best spot it's ever been, apart from Grok being pushed so aggressively. A lot of people still build publicly on Twitter. If you're conservative you can follow conservatives, if you're liberal you can follow liberals. I find Elon annoying, so I just muted his account because it seems like it was being algorithmically pushed, especially during the DOGE days. But I do follow politics pretty closely, and it seems relatively balanced overall.

Not sure if it turned into Musk's idealistic "town square," but it's certainly more interesting than it was before.

[Shog9]

So, I suspect the key to your experience is buried in this sentence: "I do follow politics pretty closely, and it seems relatively balanced overall."

Balance doesn't mean much by itself. Doesn't mean "informative" or even "accurate". Extremists from every walk of life screaming at each other might be in balance, but isn't much fun to be around. Note that the person you're replying to didn't even mention politics as such, much less a lack of "balance".

I watched twitter for years, starting in 2007. It was never what I'd call "good", but for quite a lot of years you could reasonably use it to follow people or topics that interested you without consuming an inordinate amount of time or attention. In fact, for most of its history you could do this without even bothering to log in - for a long time, that made it fairly useful as sort of an alert system. And that is long gone, so gone there's a good chance most folks using it now don't even remember (or never knew) that was ever a draw.

What's left is people who are logged in, _engaging_. And man, that was always the worst part of Twitter, the constant posturing and troll-baiting for clicks, pushing every viewpoint toward its extreme.

[dvt]

> What's left is people who are logged in, _engaging_. And man, that was always the worst part of Twitter, the constant posturing and troll-baiting for clicks, pushing every viewpoint toward its extreme.

I do agree that engagement farming is—and has been—a problem, but as someone that worked in social media (mostly on the data side, fwiw), it's been a problem for like a decade+ now, long predating "modern" Twitter. And it's a consistent problem on all platforms (I mostly use Instagram, and it's annoying on there as well).

[Shog9]

I'm well aware; I previously worked "adjacent" to this sphere, and a non-trivial part of my work life was spent trying to forestall precisely this outcome.

The difference between Twitter now and Twitter a decade ago isn't in the quantity of vapid interactions; it's the proportion of that to anything else. The slide started a long, long time ago and at some point effectively no one was trying to stop it anymore. I'm sure there are still corners where useful information gets passed on in a timely manner, but like the citizens of so many venues before it those corners have been diminished and isolated to an extent that it no longer feels worthwhile for those not already entrenched in them to bother seeking them out

[dvt]

> it's the proportion of that to anything else

And my point was that, from what I can tell, that proportion of trash::value has been increasing on all social media in (more or less) lockstep. If anything, I'd say Facebook has seen the most precipitous drop in quality, not Twitter. So much so that I don't even log in anymore, and I was veritably addicted during college.

[simianparrot]

It's increased in lockstep here on HN as well. It used to be that I came here for the comments, but more and more the comments are going the way of everywhere else: Inflammatory, polarising, and more and more botted (both automated and human bots) -- no proof, but I've been around the internet since the early 90's, I see the patterns.

I even get sucked into contributing at times, which is why that descent into trash _works_ so well. I hate it, and I visit HN less and less as a result.

[majormajor]

>arguably in the best spot it's ever been, apart from Grok being pushed so aggressively

So the best ever except for one of the biggest crap parts that didn't exist at all just a few years ago?

Though actually I think it's just more people figuring out how the interests of social media companies aren't the same as their own interests, and Musk's very-visible fiddling with things drove home the "people are trying to to addict you and influence you" point MUCH more quickly than anything ever did in the past to a wide chunk of the population. Not new in essence, but now highlighted with a giant neon sign pointing at it.

[brightball]

The ability to click the Grok button and have it privately research a claim in a post to see if there's anything else backing it up in realtime is extremely helpful.

That and the real time translation aspect leading to true global conversations right now is absolutely awesome.

[antiframe]

I think it depends on if your values align with the communities or not. For those that align, it seems fine. For those that don't, it's hostile.

[caconym_]

I stopped using it because offensively stupid drivel from morons who paid for blue checks started getting upranked everywhere, pushing down the tweets I actually wanted to see. I have no problem talking to people with different ideologies and political views (actually I tend to enjoy it), but what the site was showing me was consistently not worth my time.

[billfor]

That's because most liberals don't like to be questioned or defend their positions, in general. On X they are forced to confront or actively block people. Note that the your comment is downvoted for essentially saying "twitter is still good" with no malice, and parent is still totally fine after saying (speciously) "twitter is for horny cryptobros". They have no actual response other than to downvote or leave for an echo chamber. This has been hashed out here many time before. Truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged.