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Comment by wootland | Hacker News Reader

Musk's extreme lack of credibility aside, why would anyone use Twitter for this when there are already many very popular alternatives that have been around for years?

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Reach & ease perhaps?

To put things in perspective, Whatsapp has 3B users and Twitter has 300M. There is no reach on Twitter.

WhatsApp has 85m users in US. Twitter is said to have 95m. It's about who you want to reach. It's THE site when you want to reach well-known people.

> It's THE site when you want to reach well-known people.

Not since Musk bought it, most of them are fleeing the platform.

Is there evidence that more than e.g. 5% of users have left the platform in response to the acquisition?

Yes, the massive growth of Mastodon and Bluesky. This last move of prioritizing blue checkmarks seems like it was the final nail in the coffin, the site has become completely unusable.

Mastodon user activity is down from 2.3 to 1.3 million MAU and have been dropping for fourth months straight. I think you're overestimating the size of the "massive growth".

https://mastodon.fediverse.observer/stats

That's pretty extreme growth, with a lot of influencer/power user types too. Now with Bluesky and people just abandoning social media altogether, a Twitter implosion seems all but certain.

Social media platforms don't implement E2E encryption for the benefit of users. They implement it so that they don't have to comply with content moderation requirements regarding CSAM.

source: NYT investigations by Gabriel Dance's team linking the spread of CSAM to the growth of social media https://www.nytimes.com/by/gabriel-dance

This is a really valid point and probably the actual intention of the feature.

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