For years now I’ve done what I can to encourage use of other sites, but the fact remains that my specific community of friends and peers (many of whom have known one-another for over two decades now) have used twitter as a stomping ground since 2008 or so. It’s extremely difficult to establish that sort of intersection elsewhere, and it gets particularly ugly when folks’ livelihood and income are tied into the matter.
Having the main hub for communities torn apart because of one fool’s antics really, really sucks, and then I’m/we’re called garbage on the sites we try to establish on, for clinging to that lifeline. It’s all a frustrating feedback loop.
Just log out once and since you can’t even read embedded tweets without being logged in, you are practically isolated from the whole platform. If you last a few days, you realize that you’re not really missing anything…
They’ve been threatening to leave for 8 months. They disable their account, then a week later they’re right back on it.
Over the years it’s actually pretty sad, a lot of really talented people got hooked and stopped making good content because they’re too busy tilting at windmills on Twitter.
It feels like the obvious first step is for the people with many followers to start posting all their content on multiple sites, so that the second point no longer applies.
The trickiest part is the lack of a fully agreed upon alternative. Do you go to Mastodon, instagram, threads, etc? While some folks might have an alternative that they view as a no brainer, it’s pretty clear that there isn’t overwhelming consensus. Mastodon seems perhaps the most popular as a direct Twitter alternative, but it regularly faces complaints about usability and discoverability. If people post to both Twitter and some random alternative, if that alternative varies wildly, followers will stay on Twitter cause it’s where all their favourites are.
For anyone (such as myself) whose use-case for Twitter is just for following specific people, if those influencers aren’t using Threads or Mastodon then there isn’t a competitor who can replace that service. I only use Twitter for a few select people and that’s it. I’m on Mastodon just posting into the void which is fun but doesn’t replace Twitter for me (yet)
I have a friend that complains constantly about Twitter, how its going downhill and he doesn’t agree with what their doing and all that. Yet, he insists on using it everyday. I’ve suggested Mastodon and he said that “everyone is on Twitter” and then complains about it. Couldn’t believe that I deleted my Twitter account without a second thought.
I mean, it is not that hard of a thought process? Considering how many left reddit but have been complaining about it for years. As far as they were considering (including me), there was no better alternative. Your friend probably thinks the same. If the people he follows would go to Mastodon, they would follow. But as long as this people don’t, then there isn’t enough content there to be a viable alternative for them.
Some people still need it for local news and alerts, I have no issue with this the platforms like mastodon are not always good for this.
Especially since there is no way to find local news based on location
I hate twitter and have been staying away since 2020. (It was terrible for my MH) but even threads has it’s issues. (Not talking about privacy. If you’re using any large corporate product like apple/Microsoft/Google/Samsung you are being tracked anyway) more issues with the discoverability. You have no way of searching on threads it’s missing a lot of really important features. You can with mastodon, but again. Local news is not trending.
Then there is hive which is also hard to discover things on… And minds is a hornets nest I am not touching that.
I am happy there are more competitors than ever for twitter but they still fall short of much needed features
Yeah local stuff keeps me there. Even that’s getting worse, every local station/paper has 5-10 bots replying to every post with completely off topic right-wing stuff.
It’s still a good place to follow news. Shits getting bad though. Ads are way more intrusive than they used to be and it’s like 90% credit card scams or explicit white power stuff
A friend of mine knows a few artists that are scrambling to find an alternative because Twitter has completely hamstrung them. They’d use the platform to promote their work and then people could contact them to make commissions.
If they are selling/promoting their work, they should also start on threads soon. People are still actively building followers, which I imagine will start to settle down after a while.
The problem is obviously that they already had an established following and network of creators on that platform. They’d boost one another and so their followers would find other creators.
I personally won’t miss Twitter but I feel bad for the people who lose their livelihood because of lil Musk and his constant need to wave his wang in our faces.
That’s the group I belong to. What ever Elon is doing happens on the side of Twitter I don’t spend time on. Where I hang it’s bussines as usual. These recent changes hardly affect me at all
If anyone wants to leave Twitter, but there’s still people that you want to see, I recommend Squawker. You can’t interact or post, but you can follow people and you don’t need an account.
I’ve been considering this for a while now. Yes, Musk’s antics are only souring everything about Twitter, but the place is also a font of information that search indexes use. I’ve used Twitter a lot and I don’t want to see the information I’ve shared there to go away. If I do remove my Twitter account, my tweets will only be available through sites like the internet archive.
One problem I have with it is that topics can trend and spread so quickly that they get in front of facts and it can easily become a vehicle for misinformation and witch hunts. I think I’ve decided I’d rather get information a little later from fact checking sources than consume and potentially contribute to spreading false information. It just seems like it’s the perfect vehicle for toxic behavior even if it has legitimate benefits when used correctly.
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