Twitter Bullies
raskality.wordpress.com
raskality.wordpress.com
Followed by several Mr. Mackey paragraphs describing how people can be, gasp, rude online.
Shitposting predates twitter, the web, Usenet, and even BBS. Almost as soon as you could communicate with computers in the very first chat rooms you had academics hurling insults at each other. And before that you'll find cheeky telegraph messages.
You should read how Timur used to talk to people:
Believe me, you are but pismire ant: don't seek to fight the elephants for they'll crush you under their feet. Shall a petty prince such as you are contend with us? But your rodomontades (braggadocio) are not extraordinary; for a Turcoman never spake with judgement. If you don't follow our counsels you will regret it
Please, can we have a week free of twitter stories? Pretty please?
You know that in theory, you are free to not click the stories that you do not like?
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1033/printing-o...
11 years later and that message might finally lose its relevance. Despite Twitter's numerous faults, in my eyes, it was always an interesting platform where you could find something to look at/read, even if it was often in the form of a link to another platform.
Now, with a ton of people feeling fed up and choosing to leave, it's going to lose the one thing that made it good (and, other times, bad) - its user base. A shame if it does, Twitter is an essential part of the Internet's history.
Probably too early to tell. Early reports have it at like a million which would be a drop in the bucket. I don’t think Twitter would die just because Elon took over, the question is will his changes overall slowly improve the site or slowly degrade it for “most people” whatever that means, the hard part for Elon is the least sticky twitter users may also be the least vocal. He could listen to everyone and still lose a large swath of users for reasons he doesn’t understand.
I've heard that a ton of people have actually joined over the last week. Net new users apparently.
Sure, some will leave, but alternate platforms will never come close to even Twitter's tiny numbers.
The loudest people may be leaving Twitter for now, but I doubt it will be the death of the platform.
But depending how things change it might happen.
A big thing I think that’s unanalyzed in our age of punditry and hot takes is — what is it about imperfect systems that is successful. Everyone sees the huge problems with imperfect systems, and yet, as bad as twitter is, it seems hard to imagine a product that is much better without fundamentally changing what Twitter is.
Yahoo! Answers is an essential part of the Internet's history.
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GeoCities is an essential part of the Internet's history.
AOL is an essential part of the Internet's history.
The important thing is not to ensure that no part of the Internet's essential history ever dies—it is to ensure it is chronicled and archived.
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If Twitter changed it’s tech stack and became a genuinely better platform, they could gain those million users back almost instantly. People are not semi trucks: they’re making choices moment to moment.
Science/convention/authority/consensus/correct-politics is your greatest bullying ally.
I remember Medal of Honor/Call of Duty lobbies, MSN Communities, bulletin boards,... were quite a bit... worse. Every lobby you joined was a cesspool of racism, sexism,...
Heck, even Reddit was much worse in the beginning. While now you have Democrats versus Republican discussions, in the first years you had communities that openly talked about committing genocide of other races and sharing jailbait pictures.
The worst of Twitter now is very tame in comparison of those unmoderated lobbies.
The difference is that now the platforms pick the winners and losers. That's where it fell apart.