this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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On one hand, I'd love for it to finally die, but those toxic communities will simply move to a new site and do the same thing they did on Twitter. Like ants.
On the other hand, a lot of people have grown their business through Twitter and have relied on it. Most other sites don't have the same functionality and large number of people that make it so easy like Twitter.
So I guess I'm on the fence about Twitter dying.
Frankly I do not understand Twitter. Never been a member. Have looked at linked content sometimes but it always looks like a bunch of short meaningless thoughtless content. So I think Twitter has 0 value.
The people that seem to like it are those that want to be "the person" people follow or those that want to follow "the person". Both are kind of offensive behaviors as far as I am concerned.
I mean, that was the original point of twitter. Jack Dorsey took Facebook's status updates feature and made a whole website about it. You'd follow people you knew in real life as well as famous people you liked and then could see short updates about their life and their interests. Most of the very first tweets were just innocuous little updates. 50cent said he was in Turkey. Warren Buffet said he joined the app. A bunch of random non celebrities posted messages about what they were cooking that day.
Twitter effectively ran this concept into the ground when it 1) removed the character limit (it was originally 140 chars), and 2) added thread reply features.
The amazing thing to me is that people actually care about that. Obviously a lot of people do. I cannot fathom it. It is just not me. Kind of confirms I made a good choice by ignoring Twitter.
Okay.
I don't use Xitter, what functionality does it have that's not stupidly easy to implement? As far as I can tell the only thing that Xitter has is a userbase - and when they drive them away they'll have nothing [but debt].
A new platform has the potential for better moderation and better design to keep those unsavory elements in check. Since Musk has made himself the enemy, the only path forward is for Twitter to die. Nothing good will come from it as long as he is in charge.
It's a prisoner's dilemma thing. People have had ample time and opportunity to move to mastodon, but as you say Twitter is still where the bulk of eyeballs are, but that only remains true if everyone's too afraid to leave it.