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Comment by Baguette5242 | Hacker News Reader

At some point, someone needs to explain to me why political and/or public figures are still active and using this garbage platform. I would understand this if we were like in 2005~2010 when Facebook, Twitter and co. were at the top of the hype and where centralization was not a big concern for anyone, but nowadays, with all the red flags, all the shit show and all the alternatives that there are... I really don't get it.

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The answer is twofold 1) Network effect combined with 2) coordination problem. One or few figures dropping off is just net loss for them, does not affect the X at all. Only way to do the change is to coordinate and do it with critical mass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_game

https://fs.blog/coordination-problems/

Individual action can't solve problems effectively when the cost of changing behavior is too high when others don't follow immediately. Many public figures started their mastodon/bluesky/threads accounts but came back to Twitter when they didn't get following there.

> Individual action can't solve problems effectively

Of course it can. Just publish posts on two platforms simultaneously. Or even delay the Twitter post.

Many do that, but discussion and readers are in Twitter. Crossposting to nothing is cheap but yields nothing.

Cory Doctorow

Mastodon: @pluralistic@mamot.fr 909 Following, 54K Followers

Twitter: @doctorow, 2,814 Following, 494.4K Followers

And actually it isn’t that cheap because if you post to say 4 (X, Bluesky, mastodon, Facebook), you now have to choose where you’re going to spend time reading and responding to others. On all of them or just on X, where the gravity is.

Obviously you choose a platform which you want to promote. Hopefully the decentralized and FLOSS one (Mastodon).

The problem I rarely see discussed is that if one user I follow posts to Twitter and Bluesky simultaneously and another totally left Twitter for Bluesky I as a Bluesky reader will have a mix of posts I have already seen on Twitter and original Bluesky posts on my timeline. There needs to be a way to somehow mark and filter crossposted content.

Why would you follow the same person on two platforms if posts are the same?

Yeah, that's a fair question and I usually don't do that if user posts more than 1-2 posts per day. But it's hard to know how the account will be used in advance when user says "I made an account on Bluesky, follow me there".

To me, you numbers demonstrate that it works very well: compare the whole userbases of the two platforms and you will see that the engagement on Mastodon is larger and growing fast.

Active number of users has fallen over 1 million from the Twitter exodus times.

There are lots of inactive accounts.

someone needs to explain to me why political and/or public figures are still active and using this garbage platform.

Because that's where the journalists hang out. If you want journalists to see and report on your words and activities you have to be where they are, since they are far too lazy to go out and find you.

A huge portion of legit journos have sworn off Twitter. Entire networks have left Twitter. Most of the writers that I followed there are now found only on Bluesky.

Those are activists that call themselves journalists.

Ah yes, in order to not be "an activist" you must post on Twitter. Well-known fact.

A huge portion of legit journos have sworn off Twitter

They may have sworn off posting to Twitter, but I bet you most of them are on Twitter every single day looking for 'stories'

They just haven't realized yet that Twitter crashed and has been down as soon as and ever since Elon bought it and fired all the indispensable people. This has been confidently foretold by the multitudes of impartial fair and honest observers here on HN.

So it must all just be a fever dream. Who could possibly ignore the red flags you personally don't like, completely inexplicable.

Great way to get your message out. Lots of agencies stream twitter data, trying to pick up trends by the hour, and specific topics.

Older people: People who use the internet are getting older and like X as they've been on there for many years.

People who don't like Zuckerberg: It's an alternative social network to the Zucks

Network Effects as other have said, but it's a certain type of network now.

> At some point, someone needs to explain to me

It was likely an unusual activity automated trigger. Her account is reactivated. No need for the hysterics.

If your definition of a "garbage platform" is one that has made questionable deplatforming or censorship decisions, all platforms are garbage platforms. At least X quickly reversed this mistake. It took years for various platforms to acknowledge that censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story in the run-up to the 2020 election was a mistake.

> all the shit show and all the alternatives that there are... I really don't get it.

Network effects means that if you go elsewhere you won’t get the eyeballs and serendipitous discovery to the degree you get on X, for example.

To put it differently, people on social media seek exposure and attention and X is a way to maximize your exposure.

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