Right-wing Twitter worried Musk’s CEO pick could return Twitter to its roots | Hacker News Reader

Right-wing Twitter worried Musk’s CEO pick could return Twitter to its roots

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19 pointsmkolassa16 comments

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What, its roots as jobs program for intelligence agency alumni?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11562433/Facebook-r...

Any better source than the Daily Mail sensationalist gutter tabloid rag?

You should ask yourself why WaPo or NYT, say, seem so uninterested in stories like this.

I don't know the answer to that.

But what I do know is that if the Daily Mail is willing to put quotes from me in their articles from throwaway tweets, I'd say that their credibility is very low as a publication.

People seem to care way too much about twitter. I don’t use Twitter and am under the impression I am not missing anything. I get my internet comment reading through Youtube and reddit. Writing an article about what anonymous people think about a social media engine is quite cringe. What people post on twitter is not news and does not substantiate a news article

I'm personally convinced the popularity of this site is due to journalists kind of living there 24/7

This position ("I don't use the website, therefore it's not important") is puzzling. There is objective data, after all, SimilarWeb estimations, for example:

1. google.com 83.9B visits (~ user sessions, per Apr)

2. youtube.com 32.7B visits

3. facebook.com 16.8B visits

4. twitter.com 6.4B visits

5. instagram.com 6.3B visits

These numbers mean nothing. Just raw numbers in a vacuum. Facebook is worthless and it's visit count means nothing. Same with instagram or twitter. The only reason google is so high is due to it being a search engine. These numbers are not the gotcha you seem to be implying they are.

I don't think they argued their point well, but I do see it. The argument is that Twitter is an important website at least to the point of not dismissing the troubles of Twitter's users with "I am not missing anything". It hardly matters if a particular person is not missing anything; many other people (who are actually on Twitter) are also not missing anything but they also happen to be invested in Twitter as a social media platform.

Someone who doesn't visit this website could say, "People seem to care too much about HN. I don't use HN and am under the impression I'm not missing anything." They wouldn't even be wrong. But it's also dismissive of everyone who does use this site and ultimately irrelevant to any issues which the HN community might have with the service.

>Facebook is worthless and it's visit count means nothing. Same with instagram or twitter.

This sounds just like your strongly held opinion.

Earth means nothing. Just a tiny planet in a vacuum. Humans are worthless and what happens to them means nothing.

I think these days top apps would be a better gauge of relevance, for which twitter ranks much lower

What gives these estimations any credibility versus the numbers provided by the platforms themselves?

This also naively doesn't consider people who access the services via apps instead of visiting a website, which in 2023, are going to be a minority for a consumer-oriented social media platform.

Twitter can give you access to the beta version of 'The Narrative'. It's a little messy and there are trolls, but you can kind of see how stories and media are shaped. It's like a peak into the process instead of seeing the finished product. I would say it's generally 12-24h ahead of the news.

I'm reminded of Twitter's rise to prominence and media companies running segments about The Twitterverse (and The Bloggosphere prior to that). Of course, it's just people who have opinions publishing their opinions, but to media companies that's a threat which needs to be discussed ad nauseam. Because "The Narrative" is intentional, if there's anything which shapes The Narrative, that is either intentional or something which will be reined in.

It's why there's so many shitty arguments for hot-button topics (not just on Twitter but anywhere and everywhere; Twitter's just a relatively recent place). These "arguments" aren't supposed to be intellectual counter-points but practical ones. A person will "pick a side" which means knowing "what they believe" and "points to bring up against common arguments". It doesn't have to make sense because people aren't always trying to make sense; often, they want only to participate. (That's before getting into intentional psyops carried out by various world militaries.)

Take this exact comment, post it on your social media site of choice and see how many people say things like "and we all know who you're talking about" when, practically, this comment is intentionally talking about anyone and everyone. "Right-wing" and "left-wing" are concepts which only serve to make people believe they disagree with each other.

She follows of all MAGA people Sidney Powell, so her political leanings are as MAGA as they come.

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