X launches two new subscriptions to boost your replies
theverge.com
theverge.com
People have often accused Twitter of being full of people trying to shout the loudest and drowning out useful discussion, yet all of Musk's changes seem to be aimed at making this issue worse and worse. Soon there'll be a caste system where the only actual discussions will be between people on the same subscription tier.
Just opened Twitter to nose at their HTML, it still hasn't managed to load the homepage in the time it's taken me to write this entire comment lol.
This would actually be great, it would make it easier to filter out.
"People have often accused Twitter of being full of people trying to shout the loudest"
It sounds like maybe the subscriber change has actually addressed this problem? Instead of people trying to should the loudest, you get "random comments by $8 subscribers"?
Given the choice between people paying for attention, vs people being deliberately inflammatory for attention, I think I'd prefer the former. But again, I don't use X, just looking for more details here in order to understand.
I think maybe you've got rose-colored glasses on? See e.g. this post from Nate Silver about old Twitter:
>If you’re one of those annoying people like me who thinks there’s value in pointing out hypocrisy ... you will get absolutely shat upon on Twitter. People feel extremely threatened when you point this stuff out. They will go great lengths to deter it. They will launch all types of ad hominem attacks against you.
>...
>Twitter’s architecture makes this worse, particularly the quote retweet and the Trending Topics module. It is a medium where dissent from the consensus is treated punitively.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/twitter-elon-and-the-indigo-blo...
Or here's another post about old Twitter:
>Really, the problem with Twitter is just that it’s ruled by shouty jerks. All of the other problems — ubiquitous fear of “cancellation”, disruption of organizations, toxic status anxiety — ultimately come back to the Shouting Class.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-to-fix-twitter
It's interesting to me that HN threads about Twitter seem uniquely toxic, e.g. namecalling Elon. My hypothesis is that there's been a population replacement. Twitter was previously dominated by a certain group of shouters. The old shouters lost their power to a new group of shouters, and now the old shouters shout about the situation here on HN.
Paying to be popular on social media is an idea that could only come from the mind of a fucking loser like MuskI loved Twitter pre-Elon, but understood the criticism people had. I wonder if there’s anyone (besides bots) who can say it’s better now than it was? Would be interested to hear from them :)
You could think of Twitter as a honeypot keeping the Eternal September and the spam and the bots etc. out of the newer sites that are building their own respective identities and enjoying the higher quality of community that you get with a controlled size.
Imagine if Hacker News allowed people to pay to have their replies show up first?
This just tells me that Elmo doesn't care about discourse or being the "town square" at this point, he's just in panic mode trying to grow revenue, and he'll run the same grifter playbook that everyone else does.
Pay us money to feel like you matter..
I'm not disagreeing with anyone, in fact I am agreeing with the parent.
BTW I also think you broke these guidelines:
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
(Seems like X/Twitter is one of the most divisive HN topics.)
It's not as if using a well-known nickname for a public figure was the sole purpose of my comment.
Plenty of other folks engaged genuinely with my actual comment, and that led to some interesting conversation, which is what makes HN great.
So what exactly are you adding to the conversation at this point by trying to cherry-pick a meaningless part of my original comment to make a whole deal out of it?
I don't think they have any idea what they are doing. They seem to be throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks wrt to revenue models.
"Uhhhhh...Pay us money for the API?"
"Uhhhhh....Pay us money to get verified?"
"Uhhhhhhhhhh....Pay us money for (insert latest monetization scheme du jour)?"
For sure, I'm just pointing to the how you convince people to do it.
I am not trying to bust you. I'm trying to say you have this idea of why people might pay and I don't feel like they do. I feel like they are like someone who bought a restaurant and don't realize that people pay for food and they are going "Um, pay for entrance to the place? Um, pay to sit at the table for a certain amount of time? Um, bathroom access. People really need bathrooms when they eat. Let's charge for bathroom access. Surely that will rake in the dough."
(looks puzzled when none of that works)
I guess my take here is that I see this "pay to get your replies boosted or in front of more people" is roughly the same as "pay to feel important" in my mind...
I think they do know what they're doing, and they are trying to prey on the people who want to feel important on social media but can't get there organically, so will pay to do so, more for their own satisfaction than anything else..
But that's just my take! We can have many takes among us. :-)
The small amounts of time add up, and the quality of all of your time improves. You don’t have to use these services, and we got along just fine (if not better) before they existed.
Wtf do we call the bad blue site!?!?