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sshine

> Twitter's over, my dudes!

Is Twitter really over, though?

I wish people wouldn't try to make Twitter over by self-prophecy.

It feels disingenuous. If it were over, where are the stats?

Twitter seemed to be in decline 3 years ago [1], but its revenue seems to have been somewhat stable since 2020 [2].

Maybe declaring Twitter dead will never go out of fashion, and we just come up with different reasons.

Maybe "Twitter is dead." is the kind of statement that ultimately keeps Twitter alive, because you need platforms like Twitter to keep fake news alive.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/04/23/a-fadin... [2]: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/

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To be fair, I read that as a joke that actually plays on this notion. Some people within the fediverse are of the opinion that Twitter is a dying dumpster fire. The reality is that it's got a bunch more dumpster fires going on, but depending on the corner you are in, it's business as normal.

So the way I read that opening is a tongue in cheek expression in the voice of someone who is a little overeager to promote the fediverse as the Twitter Killer (when it's just... a different thing).

Edit: Shared this thought only to say that there possibly is a different interpretation to this opening. Not to invalidate what you said (should have mentioned this in the start) :)

It's been taken over by someone making erratic emotionally-driven changes every 10 minutes, firing people with domain knowledge left and right and already under various investigations. Maybe it'll be fine, but it's really up in the air.

What erratic emotionally driven changes have there been?

> Firing people with domain knowledge

From the sounds of it, many deserved to be fired:

> teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601008766861815808?s=2...

> Maybe it'll be fine, but it's really up in the air.

Twitter was already, by all means, up in the air.

Twitter is a highly politicized environment where you get treated differently based on your views. Since it got a new captain, all those who were in power (meaning they didn't, on average, get treated unfavorably by the platform) are now claiming that the platform is dead.

I dare to say the erratic emotion is on the side of those who say Twitter is dead.

I don't see Twitter as "dying" in the near future per se, but I think people are generally winding down their activities on the platform. There's obviously a parallel trend of people trying to rid themselves of social media in general to live less online lives. (After which they dial up usage of other social platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch.)

I took that line as tongue in cheek. The whole article is kind of making fun of people who think decentralized/federated platforms will solve all problems with social media, so it's also making fun of the type of people who would say something like that.

When the Nazis walk into the bar you throw them out or everyone else leaves and then it's a Nazi bar.

I really like your framing of it!

To be fair though, I really haven't seen a change in the content on Twitter at all since Elon took over (modulo meta-discussion about Twitter itself). Time will tell I suppose

Did you stop using the telephone because anyone, including bad people, can use it to make phone calls?

What about the grocery store? Did you know that bad people use those as well?

Even going back to your bar example. I am sure that bad people go to bars all the time. And generally speaking, nobody gets kicked out, nor do people just leave.

You have your drink like everyone else.

I would have stopped using the phone if it were a party line full of trolls. That’s social media.

I might have agreed with you back when people generally agreed what the term referred to. Now that it means whatever people want, I think it's a shitty heuristic to follow.

Replace "Nazi" with any form of obnoxious fanatic or troll. It's the principle. If you let the riffraff in too much, you will have only riffraff.

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