Exactly. Social networks moved support from private, hidden systems to a public channel. This benefitted the user, since the brand has more to lose from interactions that are negative, non-responsive, re-directive, etc.
Go to your customers if you can. Don’t force them to come to you unless you have to.
The same reason you do anything - they’ll take their business elsewhere unless you provide service and support in the way they want it.
People don’t like being told to go away and follow some other procedure when they have a problem.
Might as well tell them they should avoid having any problems requiring support while you’re at it - that’ll make it even easier for you.
If you want to control your brand perception you don't want the first result when people look for your brand on Twitter to be people tweeting about how terrible you are.
The reasons to do support on Twitter have less to do with what's tech support needs and more with marketing and controlling your brand perception.
And in the US especially, companies hate having to support users, which is why they are also pushing for AI support instead of actually having a human there.
Think about it, when is the last time you had an issue with some Bay Area Saas company and could call them on the phone to get support, like you'd do with a bank?
And if you're the only game in town with your own little walled garden, and everyone in your industry has entirely automated (read: low opex) support, where's the incentive to do better?
Unfortunately, the Telstra CSAs on Twitter aren't actually allowed to do anything useful so they mostly direct me to other, more useless support channels.
If I have a specific support request about my personal account, I'll go through the usual channels. But if it's on twitter, it's probably there because the extra visibility and public accountability is intentional.
Note that the poster said "an official support channel" rather than "the official support channel". Adding more ways for customers to contact support is usually a good thing. There was no mention of taking away other channels that you might prefer.
That notification was actually what slowly made me an active Twitter user, because they kept surfacing me interesting content and giving me a reason to come back and it became a gateway for me to discover other great content on Twitter
Bundle it under "experimental" or "advanced features" in an easy to use page with a very clear explanation of what each feature does.
I think opt-out makes sense though, for users who don't a feature.
Features that will go viral are worth adding for all, features that did not can be kept there.
Twitter very likely did market research on its effectiveness for the target market they were trying to please. Probably that's just not you.
I like HN. But I never look at particular users' posts. I just look at the front page, or sometimes at the comments list, so see what people are talking about.
I think for it to work people would have to start blocking more and using more mute words.
The thing where someone retweets something horrible because they disagree with it is so wrong and is what is being badly gamed.
It's funny. For all that I support free speech, I don't have the patience to read much of it. So I end up gravitating to well moderated forums.
I want to turn them off completely.
I've taken to just unfollowing the users who they force notifications from.
Even though sometimes I'm generally interested in the user's content, I'll view it when I feel like it, not when Twitter wants me to.
What really clogs up my notifications is when other people “like” a post I’m mentioned in. You get a few ‘runaway’ threads that pull on a few dozen people and every like becomes its own notification. A dozen people each liking a dozen tweets on the thread, the notification timeline becomes absolutely useless.
Let me mute all likes (potentially keeping likes only for my own tweets).
If they ever fully disable 3rd party clients that will be the day I cancel my account. I thought forced ads as you started a DVD were obnoxious...
"Fully disable" - probably not. But they'll certainly make it nearly impossible to produce something "like the Twitter app but better".
My approach is now to unfollow any user when Twitter forces a notification from them. Maybe someone with some brains at Twitter will notice the clear pattern and fix their idiotic notifications.