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Comment by ShakataGaNai | Hacker News Reader

It will survive, but in what manner?

Reddit is currently deeply integrated into the cultural zeitgeist. Much in the way that Digg used to be the discovery mechanism for the forefront of internet culture. Then v4 hit and everyone fled to reddit. Yes, Digg is still there but it's not the Digg of pre-2010.

Twitter is still around post-Elon, but with a lot less relevance and lot fewer legitimate users.

Reddit will still be here in a year, no matter what. But it may look very different than how it looks today.

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Is Twitter less relevant? I'm not an active user, but I haven't seen a decrease in links to tweets over the past few months.

I've only ever really consumed twitter secondhand like you, but I have observed that since the acquisition the quality of discussion in replies to tweets I am linked seems to have significantly dropped, and as objectively as one can opine about that kind of thing. Just angry graffiti and dumpster fire arguments about at-best-tangentially related culture war topics in reply to everything. I've made this comparison once already in this thread, but it reminds me of comments on youtube in the mid 00s.

But hey, youtube comments never improved much and that site is still highly relevant today, so hard to make a prediction based off my observed anecdote. And I've never used twitter much at all, so maybe I just hadn't noticed before.

I wonder if the observed decline in discussion quality has any correlation with the "boost" that is given to comments from accounts with blue check marks.

The change in discussion quality has occurred because old Twitter had an objective to cultivate one particular quality of discussion, and Musk Twitter has an objective to cultivate a different quality of discussion. These goals were stated up front by the respective decision makers. Any particular technique is simply a tool for the job. If old Twitter or new Twitter thought a method would aid in their quality cultivation goals, then they would have adopted it: if it proved counterproductive, then they would drop it.

So there is almost certainly a correlation to the boost that is given to comments. But even if it is a causative correlation, the ultimate cause is not the bluecheck boost, but the desire of the decisionmaker.

Yes. A large number of the people I followed who actually posted interesting content (as opposed to bots retweeting press releases) either greatly curtailed posting, or quit all together. I followed them out the door.

I keep seeing people say this, and I expect to see a decrease in the number of tweets I see linked from the subreddits I follow. But the tweets keep coming. Maybe it's subject matter. I primarily see tweets in sports-related subreddits, so for all I know athletes and sports writers could be the only people still using twitter.

Most of the sports accounts would fall under "Retweeting press releases". I'm talking about people I followed, many of whom were historians so would often publish original analysis, pictures they'd personally combed the archives for and digitized, that sort of thing.

Very much NOT pop culture/politics/etc.

I think the phrase "legitimate users" is worthy of scrutiny in the comment you replied to.

> Reddit is currently deeply integrated into the cultural zeitgeist. Much in the way that Digg used to be the discovery mechanism for the forefront of internet culture

I don’t know what circles you are in but neither digg nor Reddit are particularly relevant nor ever were at their peak. They’ve always been pretty niche. Reddit hasn’t been relevant since at least 2017 in my circles at least - all communities moved to discord and public discourse has always been on twitter and still is.

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