Twitter/X is an all too rare 'third place,' the digital tavern of the world. We should be rooting for it here, it remains critical internet infrastructure
Full disclosure: I bought TWTR at $17, and sold at $33, when I realized the board of directors wasn’t using their own product and don’t grok its value.
That being said, the main “winners” of TWTR were the shareholders of the public company who fortuitously stumbled into a liquidity event, earning several multiples of earnings.
IRL, “the streets” are a public good, funded by taxpayers.
If you play out that analogy, maybe “the streets” should be managed as a public utility, by a benevolent cartel of private industry, to keep them clean, sanitary, and available for use by global citizens, and to mitigate tragedies of the commons.
I love the tavern analogy. Good twitter conversations cut through the bullshit. When some institutions such as Harvard release statements about free speech but then disable comments as you point out, they get ratio’ed. Reactions to statements such as “Claudine Gay is a distinguished scholar and professor” are priceless: https://twitter.com/DerrickNAACP/status/1734720954952020330.
You're describing the Twitter that used to exist. Many of the accounts I like have left, if you don't buy a Blue check no one sees your content and the people who do buy seem to be the most extreme views. It's an unpleasant place to be, and no longer a forum where ideas are exchanged. It's a place where you buy reach, and people like Alex Jones are celebrated.
Try Threads, I like it over there and it's much more what you describe than whatever X has become.
No one who grew a community on facebook would ever use threads. Did Zuck wave one of the Men In Black wands over all of you guys? Does no one remember what they did to everyone's brand pages, including media (rugged reach to 0, made all p4p). This is how they win and how a certain type of company exploits people broadly tbh, no one remembers their playbooks
I mean, you're recommending X where Elon did even worse? If you don't like Facebook that's fine but let's not pretend X is better. The alternative is no social media, which might not be a bad idea.
I'm pro biasing time to longform tbh, but Twitter provides orders of magnitude more value than FB to me. I follow scientists, CEOs, writers, nobel laureates etc. It's wild we have all these people together in one place
And most of them have moved to Threads, so you're not really following them anymore because they don't post their real stuff. That's the problem with X, it's not Twitter. You have to let it go.
lol spot on. Defending Twitter at this point is like defending anyone of the countless "free speech" platforms that are full of right wing extremists and devoid of advertisers
Adam wants to be the last man standing yelling at the empty streets. He's going down with the ship. But what he doesn't realize is that his brand (whatever that is) is now merging with the alt-right Elontards. It's a slow boil.
It's pretty funny, TBH. He hasn't learned the lessons that advertisers know: you don't associate your brand with toxicity. It shouldn't need to be explained why Unilever doesn't want to be next to Holocaust deniers. And know Elon is saying GFY and calling out CEOs by name? Associating with Twitter is parking your brand equity on active railroad tracks
If advertisers want a complete safe space (define toxicity?) they wouldn't even be online. What they care about is sales, which Twitter ads don't really provide anyway (I talked about this in the post). If they did no one would pull them. It's just about $
They go to platforms that have moderation. Of course it's about money. What do you think companies have an obligation to donate money to Elon Musk? This post just reads like an absurd attempt at brown nosing. What world are you living in where anyone besides right wing nuts should have anything to do with Twitter now? It's a case study on how to vaporize $50,000,000,000
Unsure you read my post, no brown nosing I actually think am fairly objective on what these platforms mean. Sorry my experience isn't negative / I'm not going to jump on the hater train. But you're 100% right companies shouldn't run ads in places that don't work well. This is a valid reason not to advertise there if they weren't working. As stated I think the ads products need to be much better.
Twitter as we knew it is gone. X just isn’t the same. And the reason that “media frequently embed Tweets/posts” isn’t because of Twitter’s innate value; it’s because journalists are on Twitter. And when they fully decamp to other sites, the practice will likely wane.
It’s sad to see this decline of an old friend. Twitter has always been different things for different people, but watching its most followed user champion misinformation is indicative of its current struggles.
Most of them don't actively interact anymore, you should try Threads where they engage much more deeply. Elon has made it clear he doesn't want journalists on X so they found a home elsewhere.
No, Ed. I know plenty of journalists and they are dedicated people working for very little to make sure the public knows what is happening. There are bad actors that call themselves "journalists", but they don't represent the entire profession.
Elon is awful and the amount of negativity is overwhelming (I can't mute/block fast enough). I have cut my time spent on Twitter by 95%. Threads/Substack have been a much better value for my time.
I outlined this in my post - I've had death threats by people on Twitter multiple times over the last decade. Not new to Elon. It's just the internet, really.
Definitely not new, its just exhausting and I am okay with moving on. Lots of people are in the same boat. I have been "online" since Brood War forums and have seen just about everything over the years.
I would imagine most people leaving Twitter is Elon related and not wanting him to profit from his Qanon shift. I don't blame them. Its not just people leaving Twitter, used Tesla's are being dumped on carsdotcom locally at a pretty high rate with numerous price cuts to existing listings. Toxic Elon has gone mainstream and not just TSLAQ.
Honestly the idiots were always there, I don't see why you'd let them bother you. Mute a few keywords and you literally never see them. On a long enough timeline all forums are bad if you don't use moderation tools (note I never see any of this). We might quest forever for a perfect internet place and never find it. But we don't live that long, and we have a good watercooler! It works well enough as witnessed by the last month.
There are only a handful of people remaining who haven't moved elsewhere and the "risk/reward" has become not worth the time. I open the app, browse for a few minutes, and close it. Its kind of nice.
Agree on your other points. It would need an insane level of active moderation that is impossible to achieve without heavy handed IP permabans.
Full disclosure: I bought TWTR at $17, and sold at $33, when I realized the board of directors wasn’t using their own product and don’t grok its value.
That being said, the main “winners” of TWTR were the shareholders of the public company who fortuitously stumbled into a liquidity event, earning several multiples of earnings.
IRL, “the streets” are a public good, funded by taxpayers.
If you play out that analogy, maybe “the streets” should be managed as a public utility, by a benevolent cartel of private industry, to keep them clean, sanitary, and available for use by global citizens, and to mitigate tragedies of the commons.
I concur. 💯 Whenever people tell me they miss Twitter, I’m like, just come back. Duh. I think it’s better than ever.
Also, I’d stay on X just for Nassim Taleb tweets, lol. He’s so entertaining.
Bravo Adam!
I love the tavern analogy. Good twitter conversations cut through the bullshit. When some institutions such as Harvard release statements about free speech but then disable comments as you point out, they get ratio’ed. Reactions to statements such as “Claudine Gay is a distinguished scholar and professor” are priceless: https://twitter.com/DerrickNAACP/status/1734720954952020330.
X is the most important social media platform to ever exist, and despite quitting it a few weeks ago i still stand by the statement.
You're describing the Twitter that used to exist. Many of the accounts I like have left, if you don't buy a Blue check no one sees your content and the people who do buy seem to be the most extreme views. It's an unpleasant place to be, and no longer a forum where ideas are exchanged. It's a place where you buy reach, and people like Alex Jones are celebrated.
Try Threads, I like it over there and it's much more what you describe than whatever X has become.
No one who grew a community on facebook would ever use threads. Did Zuck wave one of the Men In Black wands over all of you guys? Does no one remember what they did to everyone's brand pages, including media (rugged reach to 0, made all p4p). This is how they win and how a certain type of company exploits people broadly tbh, no one remembers their playbooks
I mean, you're recommending X where Elon did even worse? If you don't like Facebook that's fine but let's not pretend X is better. The alternative is no social media, which might not be a bad idea.
I'm pro biasing time to longform tbh, but Twitter provides orders of magnitude more value than FB to me. I follow scientists, CEOs, writers, nobel laureates etc. It's wild we have all these people together in one place
And most of them have moved to Threads, so you're not really following them anymore because they don't post their real stuff. That's the problem with X, it's not Twitter. You have to let it go.
ehhhhh, no one is using text instagram, it's such a diff cohort - if anything they are blogging
That was true 4-5 months ago, not true anymore. Elon's moves have pushed a lot of people out, and they have found a new home.
lol spot on. Defending Twitter at this point is like defending anyone of the countless "free speech" platforms that are full of right wing extremists and devoid of advertisers
Adam wants to be the last man standing yelling at the empty streets. He's going down with the ship. But what he doesn't realize is that his brand (whatever that is) is now merging with the alt-right Elontards. It's a slow boil.
Biased and bad faith comment Gray. Not everyone on platforms with 100s of m of users is "alt right" - come on you guys are smarter than this
It's pretty funny, TBH. He hasn't learned the lessons that advertisers know: you don't associate your brand with toxicity. It shouldn't need to be explained why Unilever doesn't want to be next to Holocaust deniers. And know Elon is saying GFY and calling out CEOs by name? Associating with Twitter is parking your brand equity on active railroad tracks
If advertisers want a complete safe space (define toxicity?) they wouldn't even be online. What they care about is sales, which Twitter ads don't really provide anyway (I talked about this in the post). If they did no one would pull them. It's just about $
They go to platforms that have moderation. Of course it's about money. What do you think companies have an obligation to donate money to Elon Musk? This post just reads like an absurd attempt at brown nosing. What world are you living in where anyone besides right wing nuts should have anything to do with Twitter now? It's a case study on how to vaporize $50,000,000,000
Unsure you read my post, no brown nosing I actually think am fairly objective on what these platforms mean. Sorry my experience isn't negative / I'm not going to jump on the hater train. But you're 100% right companies shouldn't run ads in places that don't work well. This is a valid reason not to advertise there if they weren't working. As stated I think the ads products need to be much better.
Twitter as we knew it is gone. X just isn’t the same. And the reason that “media frequently embed Tweets/posts” isn’t because of Twitter’s innate value; it’s because journalists are on Twitter. And when they fully decamp to other sites, the practice will likely wane.
It’s sad to see this decline of an old friend. Twitter has always been different things for different people, but watching its most followed user champion misinformation is indicative of its current struggles.
I talk to journalists and writers every day on Twitter
I didn’t say they left.
Most of them don't actively interact anymore, you should try Threads where they engage much more deeply. Elon has made it clear he doesn't want journalists on X so they found a home elsewhere.
“Journalists” is a fairly generous term for a class of writers who regularly churn out propaganda for the Intel community.
No, Ed. I know plenty of journalists and they are dedicated people working for very little to make sure the public knows what is happening. There are bad actors that call themselves "journalists", but they don't represent the entire profession.
That's correct. Twitter is done. It's not coming back. It will never be respected again and we should all be grateful to have time back.
Elon is awful and the amount of negativity is overwhelming (I can't mute/block fast enough). I have cut my time spent on Twitter by 95%. Threads/Substack have been a much better value for my time.
I outlined this in my post - I've had death threats by people on Twitter multiple times over the last decade. Not new to Elon. It's just the internet, really.
Definitely not new, its just exhausting and I am okay with moving on. Lots of people are in the same boat. I have been "online" since Brood War forums and have seen just about everything over the years.
I would imagine most people leaving Twitter is Elon related and not wanting him to profit from his Qanon shift. I don't blame them. Its not just people leaving Twitter, used Tesla's are being dumped on carsdotcom locally at a pretty high rate with numerous price cuts to existing listings. Toxic Elon has gone mainstream and not just TSLAQ.
Honestly the idiots were always there, I don't see why you'd let them bother you. Mute a few keywords and you literally never see them. On a long enough timeline all forums are bad if you don't use moderation tools (note I never see any of this). We might quest forever for a perfect internet place and never find it. But we don't live that long, and we have a good watercooler! It works well enough as witnessed by the last month.
There are only a handful of people remaining who haven't moved elsewhere and the "risk/reward" has become not worth the time. I open the app, browse for a few minutes, and close it. Its kind of nice.
Agree on your other points. It would need an insane level of active moderation that is impossible to achieve without heavy handed IP permabans.
My timeline is active as ever but I have a lot of friends there
This is like saying fires start on their own when he's selling matches and inviting the arsonists to the party. You're being willfully naive.
It's dead and not coming back. Let it go.
I take the over, LG takes the under, same as usual 🤓
You have to take your head out and look around. This is a losing bet. Sell.