It's significants was always massively overstated in tech circles and various echo chambers.
But besides that: today's journalists don't chase news, they chase gossip. And Twitter does indeed provide them with plenty of that. Very few average people are interested in such information however, even if various groups are hyper focused on it.
It's still a gigantic group of people though, even if it's a tiny minority from the perspective of society
> Very few average people are interested in such information, even if various groups are hyper focused on it.
On the contrary, I find it that very few average people are interested in anything but gossip. Gossip is the distilled form of information, stripped free of complex ideas and difficult topics, refined to serve the single purpose most people care about: being a social object. That is, giving people something to talk about with other people. To bond over it, or argue over it - doesn't matter. For most people, the only thing that matters is relationships with other people - truth, or objectivity, or reality be damned.
People who care about accuracy of their news either actually need it for their jobs, or are just nerds. Which is what I personally prefer to be, but that's still a small minority.
I'd actually agree with that statement, but with a gigantic caveat: everyone loves "gossip", but only if it's about people in their own life.
And Twitter only provides this gossip for celebrities.
Let's do a thought experiment: let's say Taylor Swift decided to announce that she's pregnant on Twitter (random example). Now image you ask the first 100 people you encounter on the street. Journalists would be interested for sure, and yet... The people on the street won't care whatsoever.
Taylor Swift? I don't know, but probably yes for large segments of the US population. For near-universal worldwide gossip success, try mentioning Trump. For those above 30, Obama and Bush will also work. We may be past peak celebrity gossip, but politics always works. Which is why it's banned to talk about in polite company.
(And yes, I'm counting talking about political issues as gossip too, because even if it's about multiple people or no one in particular, the level of understanding and quality of exchanged "knowledge" is the same as when conversing about random actors' extramarital affairs.)
Otherwise, a big part in two people getting to know each other and bonding is in learning what topics they're both interested in gossiping about.
What journalists are interested in as people doesn't really matter. Journalism is long past that, and 100% devoted to ad impressions now. Which means journalists (are told/allowed to) wite about things the paper expects will interest people. If they're writing a lot about celebrities, they're likely right that this will interest a lot of people. Meanwhile, social media - like Twitter - is algorithmically self-organizing for engagement, which means it's a prime tool to discover what most people care about (in a hooked up drug addict sense) in real-time.
Less then 0.01% of the global population cares about what trump says on Twitter. Significantly more care about Tylor Swift.
I personally don't care what either of them post there. Nor has anyone I've worked with to date.
You're living in a tech bubble
No, that's what they say, because it's fashionable to say they're Not Like Trump, and Do Not Like Trump. But being able to state and insist on that necessitates caring about what shenanigans Trump is (accused of) pulling any given moment, which is why if you try and ask, you'll get strongly emotional reactions out of approximately everyone. If they genuinely didn't care, they'd roll their eyes or be confused about who the fuck Trump is anyway.
Now, I picked Trump because it's one current politician that approximately everyone on the planet has an opinion about, by virtue of him being the president of the United States, and the United States having nukes and aircraft carriers parked in everyone else's rectums. But beyond Trump and Obama and maybe GWBush, you'll get this reaction when mentioning locally relevant politicians and political structures (like, everyone in the EU has an opinion on "the EU").
> You're living in a tech bubble
Am I? "Don't care what [politician, celebrities] post [on Twitter]" is a distinctly tech-bubble attitude. Normies outside of the bubble are busy throwing shit about their current misinterpretation of a social media article misinterpretation of a misquote of a local politician, and/or commenting under reaction videos to some pathological YouTube vlogger reacting to the newest pathology on TikTok.
In a global audience, very few people care at the moment. That won't change until he comes back into office and starts to use these nukes.
I encourage you to actually interact with native people on the street the next time you go on a trip abroad. It is very rare to find someone interested in US politics that doesn't live in the USA.
American pop culture, which is what I consider Tylor Swift to be a part of, continues to have strong influence globally. Though that's also on a diminishing trend - mainly because their productions have been getting way worse over the last decade (at least wrt movies and TV shows)
/Edit: we've also gotten quite offtopic with this discussion, because being interested in trump is something very different to caring about what he writes on Twitter
Or you think the papers people read aren't writing propaganda?
It's a lot of work but I still consider it very viable. It's also very educational.
The problem is just that it doesn't scale. Google will block SearXNG if it becomes more than a fringe phenomenon used by some geeks. WhatsApp will start fighting bridges again if significant amounts of people start using it.
I don't really care about fixing society as a whole to be honest, but it's important to realise that this can never be a solution for everyone, even when talking the technical difficulty level out of the loop. These things work because they are niche.