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Comment by jamiek88 | Hacker News Reader

I’m scared what scorched earth musk in charge of a zeitgeist weapon like twitter will do.

There are two cohorts who dramatically overestimate Twitter's influence and importance - tech people and journalists. Twitter really is not very important. At my non tech workplace of 800 people, I'd be surprised if 50 were active on Twitter.

“Most people aren’t on twitter” is not a valid argument against twitter’s influence. Compare with “most people aren’t CEOs”, “most people aren’t politicians,” etc.

Some people have a lot more influence than others, and the influential people are disproportionately on twitter.

> tech people and journalists

Also politicians.

That is the whole problem though, isn't it? A few hundred random people on Twitter are often more than enough to manufacture a wave of articles across multiple news websites and newspapers.

Twitter isn't important, the problem is that influential entities think that Twitter is important (and representative).

>Twitter isn't important, the problem is that influential entities think that Twitter is important (and representative).

Which makes it important..

Correct, as long as the illusion stays up.

We can build another if it comes down to it.

See: Facebook's declining usage, and the rise of TikTok.

Social networks are all quite replaceable, there are no exceptions.

Twitter won in its micro blogging space (there were numerous competitors for a brief time, way back), however it has never been a stellar product. It can and will be replaced if Musk turns it into a disaster.

I think the jury is still out on whether TikTok is an improvement over Facebook.

Who said anything about improvement?

Well the TSLAQ community is certainly assuming they're gone.

It will be funny of the Blue Checkmarks have to form their own social media platform - or in incredibly irony - end up in one of the "right wing" platforms as a refuge of free speech.

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