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Comment by jitl | Hacker News Reader

When the app basically amounts to a new tab for an existing dominant social network, I don’t think this is too interesting. It’s almost like reporting “30M people opened the Facebook Marketplace tab” or something. I signed in, took one look at a Mr Beast tweet on my homepage, wondered “why would I want to look at this?” and then closed the app. But I count as a signup!

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>one look at a Mr Beast tweet on my homepage, wondered “why would I want to look at this?"

I would think you'd always expect the most popular stuff to be recommended to you until you have some data in the app for the recommendation engine to go off of?

I haven't done much digging but I don't see where I would go to only see content of people I follow.

While you are correct, I think this is one of those the user might not care, and a contributor to why being an upstart in this market segment can be so difficult.

It will be interesting what their Daily Average Use or Monthly Average Use looks like in a month. It's hard for successful firms to rediscover the skills needed to launch a new product that is not an offshoot or derivative of existing offerings. I think the more new competitors to Twitter that emerge the less likely it is than any gain critical mass to challenge as a viable replacement. But nothing lasts forever so it will be educational to watch.

I really want the old pre-musk, before blue checkmarks, Twitter back so I've been trying to give it a real go. Something's gotta fill that void I have now. It can't be Twitter, it is so terrible now. Bluesky and Mastadon just haven't done it for me either.

Other than people complaining that the new twitter sucks, I have noticed no difference. Why is it terrible now, and why was it good before? The checkmark thing is whatever, I never gave checkmarks any deference.

The only change that I've disliked has been requiring being logged in to read tweets.

One complaint I've seen from a lot of people is that they dislike the tweets they see in replies now because of the blue check prioritization but I'd imagine this really depends on the type of content you follow on twitter

> The only change that I've disliked has been requiring being logged in to read tweets.

Yeah, fair, I agree that this is not good. It makes the prospect of posting news/updates on twitter worse because you can't link it externally, it reduces your reach.

> One complaint I've seen from a lot of people is that they dislike the tweets they see in replies now because of the blue check prioritization but I'd imagine this really depends on the type of content you follow on twitter

This is also fair but it doesn't bother because I think it will be the direction all social media sites must go. I think the amount of bots on the internet will grow beyond all reason and we'll need some sort of filter to be sure that we're actually interacting with humans. Maybe there's another solution than a paywall, but I can't think of one.

The problem with the blue checkmarks is now if you expand any popular tweet to see replies you just see the blue checkmarks, who happen to be a self selected particular type of person most people don't want to hear too much from.

1. I have to keep notifications disabled on twitter now, because they keep suggesting truth-social type content. Regardless of your politics, regardless of who you follow.

2. It’s a social network, and other people leaving changes it. I followed a handful of interesting people to mastadon, but it’s not everyone and now my follow list is fractured. Neither thread nor mastadon solve this, but it’s something new caused by Elon.

3. You can not give blue check marks any deference but the platform does. Now more than ever.

4. All these crazy shenanigans are tiring. The 600 tweet a day limit, Disabling moderation, banning mastadon links, etc. they make twitter unstable.

To get to brass tacks: some groups continue to be bitter over Musk due to a self-created petty, political, disagreement. They want their safe spaces back. Like a child upset that the people she kicked out of her birthday party are back.

Threads is going to fail because you would need various social groups of large representation to move en masse e.g. African Americans. Last I checked Black Twitter isn't going anywhere over some petty disagreement over Musk. Anyone migrating (I.e. leaving Twitter while simultaneously going to Threads) is in a small bubble.

Threads is going to be the "Twitter killer" just like Mastodon was supposed to be. Everyone declaring success already hated Twitter to begin with. They have the Musk-hating media behind them writing slanted articles. I've already read the doom and gloom headlines this morning. Instagram sucks and everyone I know hates it. This was the Hail Mary pass to save it because Meta is out of ideas.

It's vastly different, you're being disingenuous or just don't know anything about Twitter.

There's a bunch of new features that nobody uses, like communities. Blue checkmark comments for days before you see good comments on popular tweets. The for you feed is full of people I don't want to see, and that was my favorite feed before. Ratelimits, and just overall skyrocketing negativity across the board. The only good thing is spaces. A lot of good people stopped tweeting. It's vastly different.

I am also not understanding what people think is wrong with current twitter. Nothing really has changed from my pov.

It's owned by someone that the left can no longer stand because he doesn't align with their beliefs enough. They have been ramping up their dislike of Musk the more he doesn't align to their ideas (the partians on both sides tolerate no meaningful divergence from their agendas). At this point it pours out of them like their hatred for Trump does. Just mentioning Elon Musk sets off an emotional trigger and they'll rampage about how terrible he is (Reddit is overflowing with it). It's largely a partisan tell, how you respond to Musk. Before the left went crazy about him, the right used to dislike him for being supposedly too green, environmental-focused, too cozy with the Obama Admin, etc.

Back in reality, who cares if he destroys Twitter. It doesn't matter. Something else will take its place. Personally, I almost enjoy the chaos and watching people lose their minds over entirely trivial things. Culturally the US is imploding (not a new momentum, merely advancing further), I might as well be entertained by the very large numbers of people starting the fires.

What about people like me, who have considered him a toxic moron the whole time?

Yeah I wonder if there really is this supposed demographic of people that loved him and dislike him now. I think people who knew much about him either never liked him or have hitched their political leanings to his and gone along for the ride.

I used to have a lot of respect for the quiet and reserved Elon who put rockets into space and had an interesting car company. Now's he's spreading misinformation about mass shootings where children died and just being unbelievably awful and toxic. Turns out he's an absolutely horrible person all the way down. He should have just stayed quiet and built his companies.

It was the road tiles and the roof tiles for me. I did not know about him before hearing about those.

I remember when Tesla started out, before him. I used to use their car as an answer to smug Hummer owners. Then suddenly I hear that this Musk dude "founded" Tesla, but the earliest articles never mentioned a founder, just a bunch of engineers doing cool stuff.

And then one day my wife shows me this article of this guy who's got this cool idea of roof shingles with little tiny inefficient solar sensors in it, like that was going to accomplish something, and then the same guy, he wants to make these road shingles with hard glass to get all scratched up, and that's gonna HOLY FUCK THIS GUY IS A FUCKIN IDIOT

And ever since all these people acting like he's this... I swear they got sold on billionaires as useful strictly on the strength of this guy's bad ideas.

I might be overindulging after work a wee bit

I'm probably a minority user but for Twitter I use it to follow official government accounts (like the National Weather Service) and a few transit-oriented shitposting accounts that I participate in. I only use the Following feed because I do not, in any way shape or form, have the slightest inclination of "discovering" people or reading what "influencers" have to say or any of those things. For that, Twitter, is still great. I can live in my own content bubble.

Bluesky is good but it doesn't have those accounts (yet, maybe ever?).

Threads seems cool and I've never used Instagram before, but that default feed you have to view makes me dizzy to look at. The comments and posts from accounts I would never follow are so fucking stupid and awful that I cannot use that app until/unless I can silence all of that bullshit. I don't even mind the ads. Whatever. Maybe I'd even pay (ala Twitter Blue but Musk is acting like a piece of shit so not giving him money) but I am not going to be subjected to a steady stream of the worst possible content imaginable.

What I want is Simple Global Message Service with the ability to dig/drill in to things I want/like, and to be able to only view content from people I allow (i.e. follow). Whatever product (Twitter today) gives me that gets my eyeballs or wallet.

-full of bots.

-full of russian troll farms.

-full of random porn.

>one look at a Mr Beast tweet on my homepage, wondered “why would I want to look at this?"

They haven't implemented a follower feed yet, but it is in the works.

yeah, everyone and every corporate PRs are signing up to secure their userid for fear of squatting but... not sure if there is more to it.

btw, it seems across-platform squatting is becoming increasingly worsening problem. horrible people just take IDs they've seen elsewhere, just-like-that.

Does threads not use the same usernames as Instagram? Like if I sign up, using my instagram account it wouldn't be the same?

It does, yes, I think you can just log in with existing Insta without problems. But not all of those wanting an escape from Twitter at this stage have Instagram accounts, or at least not in the same ID.

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