Just gives me more of that feeling that the community here is becoming more detached. Maybe it's just me, but I'm watching The Great Fragmentation with open eyes to see what comes next.
I've been toying with all the various Twitter alternatives as they have had their 5 minutes of fame and Threads definitely feels different and like it might stick.
That feels like very big news but not to HN I guess?
For me if I wanted something more zealous I'd spend more time on Libera channels or FSF MLs. The few I do spend time in satisfy my fill of that culture.
It's a bare-bones Twitter clone made by Meta. There's no interesting new technology to discuss, no open source angle, no discussion on the company founder that hasn't been done 100 times.
HN has plenty of discussions about interesting Meta projects - Quest, React, the metaverse, financial discussions, etc. I just don't think there's much to grip people on this topic.
Regardless I do think its funny that Facebook had photos but Instagram is still a product and now Facebook has always had status updates and now Threads is a product. Facebook is almost just a mashup of Instagram + Threads. Or in a way some demographic of users liked a Facebook experience but for photos only (Instagram) and another set of users liked a Facebook experience but for status updates only (Threads).
At least, the first time in a while
YouTube Shorts also exists to compete with TikTok.
I can't actually think of the last time one of the existing networks launched a new app to compete rather than just stealing UX features, that is a new one to me for sure!
* This is anecdotal, but I quit using Twitter in 2016, so the "downfall" of it doesn't impact me much and I am not looking for a replacement. News about all of this is mildly interesting, but I have no personal investment in the outcome really.
* One of the things that Twitter did in the past couple weeks that they took a lot of heat for was that they gated viewing tweets to having an account. But Instagram and Facebook have been gated like this for a while now.
For example, try this link in a private browser window: https://www.instagram.com/cristiano/
You can view thumbnails of the 9 latest posts, but trying to click into the detail view on them gives you a login gate. Trying to do pretty much anything opens a login modal.
So why are we zealous and ideological for not being excited that the product that seems likely to replace it is coming from a company that does the same exact things that people are upset about?
But maybe the crowd here should be a bit more humble and restrained by their biases, it's a useful art to practice. When I first saw YouTube in late 2005 I told all my friends that it would go nowhere because Flash was a resource intensive, proprietary technology. Now I pay for YouTube Premium.
Not to say that doesn't happen all the time, but agree with GP; they did a thing meh. Will seen if it gets traction over Twitter and then that will be interesting.
My perception is that a lot here have accounts (though less than the portion of society at large), but few use them much.
Not sure how to get actual data on this though.
HN supports poll posts
Although they did do a very good job. The app is well thought out and the service has been rock solid since launch.
Of course if Twitter wants to host porn more power to 'em, it's just not a make or break differentiator. I have a feeling in a year or two people will assume that if you're still on Twitter, it's for the porn, with the plausible deniability of "no man, it's for the free speech!"
Can't praise a thing I can't access,
Yours truly,
- EU citizen
P.S no web interface in 2023?
Twitter and Musks other ill-adventures will continue to dominate HN though. Zuckerberg is not part of the HN in-crowd and will draw about as much water as his other services.
Also the Reddit situation was very dramatic and adversarial, Threads is just a new boring product with a clean launch.
There isn't much to say.
I honestly can’t imagine a source like the New York Times not having an article. Twitter’s threatened lawsuit alone merited coverage.
I think tech news is relatively quiet on this front because quite frankly, twitter is not that interesting as a product technically speaking. This is a political story not a technical one, and it ties into so many beats that are popular with the masses (e.g. the ultra rich being stupid and getting their comeuppance, increased influence of the far right with twitter being seen as a breeding ground, musk specifically being hated by a large segment of the population, etc).
My anecdotal experience is that the only people I interact with where this comes up are either people who seen to be parroting a story from 24 hour news or a techy that abandoned Twitter shortly after the purchase (many of have since whom quietly returned).
They all want something new, or at least Twitter before Elon.
Most recently, we were trying to find news about the Paris riots, and there’s nothing but misinformation (videos from other riots) spammed consistently, that have no community notes, and have nothing but racist twitter blue users pushed to the top of the replies.
It’s creating a huge fog of war when just trying to figure out what’s going on.
It’s like all the moderation systems have just gone offline.
For the specific case of the Paris riots, you could check on Le Figaro (right-leaning) and Le Monde (left-leaning) – yest, both of them.
I find that following two newspapers allows me to get a balanced-enough take on current events. No need to try to decipher some ultra-short quip from random people and infer the 90% of missing context on my own.
- Get updates between the new cycles. If you can get the scores for the football match in tomorrow’s paper, why even need to see the game?
- Get more targeted information, i.e. my favorite pastry shop is where some stuff went down, was it impacted? Someone might have commented on that/taken photos nearby.
- Get an even more unbiased opinion. Both the right and left leaning papers might have the same sponsor they happen to not make disparaging remarks about, or the local government might be able to quash things.
Then again wherever you have eyeballs looking you’ll have people trying to push an agenda in the raw feed, whether it’s political, economic or clout chasing.
I've been very frustrated by this for a few years now. At least since the start of the pandemic response, I've noticed myself having a very hard time finding news on topics the BLM protests/riots, trucker rallies, Paris protests/riots, etc that didn't feel extremely controlled or moderated. Finding what seems to be unbiased updates on the war has also been particularly difficult, though that's kind of expected given that it's effectively an active hot war between Russia and Nato at this point.
Are people who dont care about politics the target audience of the mainstream "news"? I'm sure lots of people dont care about twitter drama but i think the people who read the publications talking about twitter drama are firmly in the camp of people who care, which is why said publications are talking about it.
Wel again I can only speak to the interactions I have with people I know, but much of my family spends an inordinate amount of time watching 24 hour news and telling me about he latest headline of the day. They don't seem to care about politics at all though, as soon as I ask questions attempting to dig deeper into the issue or political views that might lead to that stance the conversation grinds to a halt. My best read on most people that fall into the target audience of network news is that they are people more easily influenced and drawn into drama that pits one group against another.
My original question regarding Twitter really was meant as a genuine question though. The only people I have had even mention Elon Must and Twitter seem to be in the tech world, I'm curious if I'm in a bit of a bubble myself and the Elon/Twitter issues do in fact reach beyond that.
There’s a strong likelihood Threads exists as a Twitter alternative but not necessarily a direct competitor, simply because of demographics.
I think of Musk's idea of turning Twitter into a super app. Well, if I go into a business and somebody asks me to pay with Twitter that business is going to be associated with Musk, Twitter, and all that. If the business is selling anti-woke razor blades it might be a good fit, but an ordinary business just doesn't want to be associated with that. Contrast that to Visa, Mastercard, or American Express, all of which have worked hard to be associated with a positive image.
I’m no twitter owner, but to me the reasonable thing would be to put the name on the credit card on the account along with the checkmark.
That would scale for personal accounts, but not businesses. They could be charged extra and manually verified against national business registries.
EV failed in the marketplace. “No LEI, No Trade” made a lot of companies get an LEI but last time I looked it was widespread for companies to keep using their LEI without renewing it.
Here is a common thing that happens to me:
- someone sends me a funny post
- I want to "like" it or save it or whatever
On Twitter and other centralized social media this is very easy to do. On Mastodon, it is not. I have to copy the URL, paste it into a text field on my instance, and then like it.
Ideologically motivated (i.e. "federated-first") open source projects never succeed in attracting mainstream users. They have to make too many compromises, and inevitably prioritize their motivation (federation) over what is necessary to attract the mainstream (e.g. excellent UX).
The fact that mastadon is doing as well as it is, is sign number 1 that the market is begging for something like threads to happen.
This is correct but it's helpful to specify how much more toxic twitter has become than other platforms.
For example anti-LGBT sentiments are common on other platforms just like they are common in society. But on twitter people like Jake Shields literally call for the murder of therapists, doctors, and teachers who are supportive of LGBT teens. How did twitter respond? First they let the tweets get thousands of engagements. Then they removed the tweets without banning Shields. Finally they removed other people's tweets, archive links, and screenshots documenting Shields' hate speech. Jake Shields is still on twitter pushing toxic lies and disinfo.
TL;DR: Elon Musk's twitter protects people who want to murder doctors and teachers.
Unfortunately for him & his backers, the political shenanigans and general incompetence left Twitter vulnerable, with users seemingly choosing to trust Meta over it, of all fucking companies. This will be case study in business school for years.
Meta takes a thing you find useful and gradually tweaks it until it no longer does what you originally wanted it for. I don’t trust them to run a service .
Threads has accumulated a huge number of users in a very short amount of time, and it's related to the instability, near-implosion we've seen at Twitter from Musk's leadership. Of course that's big news.
It's just not really big news here, because people here REALLY hate Meta (and probably dislike the Twitter-style model of social media anyway).
It’s like kids got a new toy. Any toy. So they gotta play with it.
Because of Elon Musk Twitter has been in the news for months. That includes his impulsive decision to buy it, firing massive amounts of people, and to keep everyone focused on him a barrage of right wing themed tweets about hot button political topics. Of course the news media is reporting on this.
Then a massive US tech company, whose founder has a hollywood blockbuster biopic, releases a clone of Twitter. That's also news.
THEN Elon Musk sues them right after the launch publically claiming former Twitter employees stole code. You know, Elon Musk, the person I mentioned who did all those things he what did.
Then you make this "oh typical US media, the Zucks has them under his liberal soft thumb" comment because no way the news would normally report on all these major public and outrageous figures along their big business infighting
In a way they are in a cage match only it's Threads vs Twitter.