Twitter thrived with its own micro-celebrities, many of whom were anonymous Socialists with the word “boner” in their handles. It’s not clear if they’re coming to a Mark Zuckerberg-owned social network.
Twitter’s best service was instant takes on breaking news. Are bland, micromanaged Instagram celebs suddenly going to have something interesting to say during a presidential debate?
That pretty much sums up why I never used Twitter. That sounds horrible.
Is there something else of value that you think micro-blogging can provide that causes people to login to it on a daily basis?
The entire point of micro-blogging is essentially “this is my opinion on x” shouted into the algorithm where the algorithm then picks up what is popular among the userbase. Invariably the only thing that provides something constant and new to talk about every single day is breaking news.
I think it’s a horrible form factor for expressing your opinion. The text limit inherently causes reductivism and “hot takes” which lack nuance and spread misinformation. I think it’s a shitty form factor for serious topics. If it’s something relatively harmless like jokes and memes then I don’t think it’s too harmful.
The text limit inherently causes reductivism and “hot takes” which lack nuance and spread misinformation.
I’m confused. Are you trying to imply that long articles do not do the same thing? Everything on the internet is clickbait and outrage fuel these days. Not just on Twitter. It’s prevalent on reddit, which I would say has been the epicentre of much more serious problems than twitter ever caused: theredpill manosphere community which has evolved into Andrew Tate today, incels, pizzagate, etc.
I think if we compared the damage done by every platform out there Twitter would actually be at the lower end. It’s great at causing a lot of extremely minor drama and arguably creates a lot more minor shit than other ones (which probably drives its high activity), but has generally avoided causing extremely serious shit unlike other longform platforms.
That pretty much sums up why I never used Twitter. That sounds horrible.
Is there something else of value that you think micro-blogging can provide that causes people to login to it on a daily basis?
The entire point of micro-blogging is essentially “this is my opinion on x” shouted into the algorithm where the algorithm then picks up what is popular among the userbase. Invariably the only thing that provides something constant and new to talk about every single day is breaking news.
I think it’s a horrible form factor for expressing your opinion. The text limit inherently causes reductivism and “hot takes” which lack nuance and spread misinformation. I think it’s a shitty form factor for serious topics. If it’s something relatively harmless like jokes and memes then I don’t think it’s too harmful.
I’m confused. Are you trying to imply that long articles do not do the same thing? Everything on the internet is clickbait and outrage fuel these days. Not just on Twitter. It’s prevalent on reddit, which I would say has been the epicentre of much more serious problems than twitter ever caused: theredpill manosphere community which has evolved into Andrew Tate today, incels, pizzagate, etc.
I think if we compared the damage done by every platform out there Twitter would actually be at the lower end. It’s great at causing a lot of extremely minor drama and arguably creates a lot more minor shit than other ones (which probably drives its high activity), but has generally avoided causing extremely serious shit unlike other longform platforms.