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Comment by quelsolaar | Hacker News Reader

Unpopular opinion: I think twitter as a platform is noticable better now, longer tweets, better media quality, a reverse cronological timeline that sticks, less adds, verification accessible to more people and the beginnings of transparency around the algorithm.

What is worse, is the users. The Elon hate overshadows any rational discussion of the platform.

Twitter IMO was at a local maximum and needed shaking up, and with time more and more improvements will come.

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> I think twitter as a platform is noticable better now, longer tweets, better media quality, a reverse cronological timeline that sticks, less adds, verification accessible to more people and the beginnings of transparency around the algorithm.

Current Twitter:

(1) Does not have a reverse chronological feed (neither For You nor Following are ordered that way),

(2) Has greater ad density (they may have fewer unique advertisers and/or fewer ad dollars, but that’s…not the same thing), [unless the delta between Blue and regular Twitter is undersold, even the Blue has greater ad density than old free Twitter]

(I disagree with a number of your subjective judgements, too, but its not worth discussing them.)

I think you are right in some ways. The site didn't crash and burn like everyone was predicting. It's still snappy, and has more features now. What gets me is the never ending stream of childish decisions, stuff like replacing the logo with Dogecoin, messing up the blue tick, banning linking certain major domains, and other stuff.

> The site didn’t crash and burn like everyone was predicting.

“Everyone” wasn’t predicting that. A large number of people were predicting a high probability (but not necessarily immediate or catastrophic effect) of service degradation from the mass of knowledge that was jettisoned – and this has manifested and continues to – and some people who saw that criticism and didn’t understand it relayed it as immediate immediate demise, which hasn’t.

I recommend visiting reddit.com/r/twitter to see the number of people who can't log into their account for various BS reasons and can't reach anyone for support.

To be fair, r/facebook and r/instagram are equally as bad. I'm not sure there's a social media site that has good support for end users (not advertisers).

That sounds like basically every service.

That’s not how software crashes, it’s not like windows xp fail to boot up nowadays.

Twitter crashed in the way that it had plenty of downtime since — some problem won’t be identified in time, and no one is there to fix the issue.

Stuff most people don't notice, but immediately became better after the acquisition:

Since I'm never ever logged into twitter, there before Elon I could only read about one tweet before getting a fullscreen popup telling me to login to view more. Within weeks of Elon, that became less intrusive, and I think is even better now. It's one of these obvious things that unfortunately is very commonplace in modern software: "Make the UX terrible for users that don't directly add revenue."

I still get login prompts if I want to see more than a handful of responses, or other unpredictable situations.

"verification accessible to more people"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think Twitter Blue did anything to verify that you are who you say you are beyond confirming that you can spend $8/month.

Verification was meant to, you know, verify people.

Yup, someone who regularly uses Twitter claiming it's a form of verification is frankly misinformation at this point.

Instead of the blue checkmark for verification it's been replaced with gold (for companies) and sliver checkmarks (for governments/politicians). And an individual can link his account with an verified organization (like the CEO of Binance).

I think it's better than the old system where people would try to bribe their way or put out fake press releases to obtain notoriety for a bluecheck. Now the bluecheck is more of a "I'm less likely to be a bot" signifier.

> sliver checkmarks (for governments/politicians)

can't tell whether typo was accidental or not

Now verification is meant to, you know, verify humans.

(Yes, you can still pay $8 and have a llama post on your behalf, but there will be less spam/scams this way)

I don't know what verification twitter does, but I do know that the verification took longer than the feature unlock. I'm sure their process could be improved but its early days. My unsubstantiated prediction is that in 6 months other social networks, especially Instagram and FB, will be absolutely flooded with AI generated content, and at that point 8$ will make a big difference.

Agreed. Verification was the biggest thing for me - it being inaccessible to those who weren't "highly regarded" or a notable feature made it useless to me. Now its easy to see who is engaged and have their foot put forward in the platform, and who are just using it as another simple social media site.

> Now its easy to see who is engaged and have their foot put forward in the platform, and who are just using it as another simple social media site.

I’m interested to hear how this information is helpful to you. Let’s say you find two artists who are posting similar content, but one of them pays for a Twitter Blue subscription. How does that affect how your perception of their posts? Do you value the posts of the Twitter Blue subscriber more? If so, why?

I'd like to draw a comparison to the book "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" by Laurence Sterne.

For example, Sterne writes in his novel, "Writing, when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation." This quote highlights the importance of engaging and thoughtful communication, which is a value that can be extended to the world of social media.

Subscribing to Twitter Blue signifies a user's commitment to engaging more deeply with the platform and fostering thoughtful conversations. Like how I invested their my in uncovering the book's complexities and wit, Twitter Blue subscribers put in the effort to discover and interact with unique and thought-provoking content and their follower base.

> Subscribing to Twitter Blue signifies a user's commitment to engaging more deeply with the platform and fostering thoughtful conversations.

Firstly, this hasn’t been my impression of Twitter Blue subscribers so far, so I’m curious why you think this. Are you saying that the act of paying for the service signifies a user’s commitment to engaging in thoughtful conversation? In that case, would you say Twitter Blue subscribers are in general more thoughtful than Hacker News members, who aren’t paying a fee?

Also, I’d still like to know the answer to my original question. You said that the blue checkmark is now a useful signal to you, where it wasn’t before. I’m interested in how seeing blue check marks next to people’s names affects the way you use Twitter.

> Let’s say you find two artists who are posting similar content, but one of them pays for a Twitter Blue subscription. How does that affect your perception of their posts? Do you value the posts of the Twitter Blue subscriber more?

To me, all it says is that one of them paid for a Twitter Blue subscription, which could have been for myriad reasons. The most likely one being more reach on one’s posts.

There isn't verification anymore.

There is verification, its just no longer tied to the blue check (except for the legacies, which have been devalued by being merged with the “paid for Twitter” checks and will soon be eliminated entirely.) There are a number of other flair icons that have been adopted to serve the verification function that the blue check used to serve because the blue check no longer does, like the yellow check for verified brands, the miniature square version of the Presidential Seal that Obama has after and in addition to the blue check, and I think some others.

Is there a way to quantify any of this?

I never spent much time on Twitter as a user (outside several years ago) and I found the medium and when I did most users intolerable pretty much the whole time. I tried it a few times now and then, still terrible experience.

After a while I just felt like the medium and the feedback loop / perverse incentives provided was all broken.

It's also noticeably faster now. Even though I don't like Elon cause he punches down, Twitter really was just languishing there and is much better now.

It is only an unpopular opinion if you are in a weird echo chamber. Most people, even Twitter users, don't even have an opinion and do not care.

Edit: Funny how threads that screech Elon bad are not flagged and are plentiful and yet this one is flagged for some mysterious reason. Keep jumping the shark HN.

> Funny how threads that screech Elon bad are not flagged and are plentiful and yet this one is flagged for some mysterious reason. Keep jumping the shark HN

Yep. I use an RSS reader and before I click in to a thread I can not see if it is flagged, but I bet I could predict with pretty good accuracy which ones will be when I arrive inside of HN. I actually thought this one would be…and was right.

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