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Comment by IAmNotACellist | Hacker News Reader

It's so user-friendly that you get banned for sharing any remotely controversial opinion. Just like the good old days of Twitter!

Twitter/X is actually a balanced discourse site now. CNN even admitted that the party affiliation of its users went from majority-left (65/31) to split down the middle, 48/47. https://x.com/ScottJenningsKY/status/1861445812175147353

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Yes but mars man bad.

Ergo if everyone who hates mars man proclaims that the alternative to mars man website is “the next big thing” and “exploding in popularity” loudly and often enough, then maybe it will actually become popular outside the mars man bad crowd.

You know it’s manufactured when news outlets are comparing App Store download rankings of X and BlueSky. The new app versus the one that’s been around for nearly 20 years and already present on most devices it ever will be.

Meanwhile in the real world nobody has heard of BlueSky or really cares that people they’ll never interact with no longer get banned for being bigots on X.

That reads like massive cope.

Twitter fundamentally offers no killer feature. Being "around for nearly 20 years" means nothing.

> Twitter fundamentally offers no killer feature.

Less censorship is a pretty important feature

Censorship isn’t absent from Twitter. Quite the opposite.

Twitter is all about censorship. That's its core feature now. Intimidation has been engineered into the platform. Suppression of unpopular or marginal opinions that don't align with the owner has been systematically added to the platform. Try typing the word 'cis' into the platform.

A really killer feature for me is not being bombarded by racist, sexiest, homophobic, and transphobic drivel. Twitter doesn’t support this feature; it’s all but impossible to avoid all that crap on that platform.

Post "cisgender".

Bluesky also has the "less censorship" feature :D

When people say censorship in regard to Twitter they just want to be shitty to people. Just post on 4chan what’s the real difference?

Twitter is a cesspool.

It does when you’re talking about the number of recent App Store downloads.

Which I was.

It's still a factual statement to say it has a higher ranking and it's irrelevant to mention the 20 years thing. Someone said the car is the most popular vehicle in the last year and someone pipes up to say the horse and carriage has been around for three thousand years! Wow!

thanks you for this. I for one find your analorgy both highly apt and convincing!

You’re either being intentionally obtuse or unintentionally missing the point.

News outlets giddily claiming some newly launched FPS game is going to replace Counter-Strike because it had more downloads in a given week in 2024 would be a far more apt analogy and equally as absurd.

And yet, something having more downloads than the Old Thing, is one of the first signs. No need to fuss over it and get defensive.

Change doesn’t happen all at once, right? Bluesky may still not have the mindshare — but two weeks ago they were 3-4 coin flips away from unseating Twitter, and now they only need one more. That they could become the leader in their category was unthinkable, and now it’s not.

Besides, 25 million users is plenty already.

The people active on Twitter are a small subset of "the real world", and the move to BlueSky is certainly very noticeable there. About 80-90% of people I was following on Twitter have a Bluesky account now, most of them are actively posting there. And this is not just a left-wing bubble, I mean I don't follow any Trump supporters but there are plenty of people in my feed that would usually be considered conservative.

After all the hullabaloo recently I went and looked at it for the first time.

Here's my true first-time user experience: The first 10 posts recommended to me were 1 comedian making a joke, 2 pictures of space, and 7 hate-based partisan political posts. All from one extreme end of the political spectrum. You can guess which. I instantly left and will never go back.

For what it's worth, I also do not use X.

I'd agree the default user experience is shit (and I felt it was shit on old Twitter too). It's like a shotgun of shit at the wall to see what sticks. But once you engage with content you want (which can be entirely non-political and niche-interest based) that goes away.

Or at least I suspect so. I often end up being interested in politics and thus get more of it, but I'm not complaining. I get a good mix of my specific interests, art, humor, cute animals, and politics.

> Twitter/X is actually a balanced discourse site now. CNN even admitted that the party affiliation of its users went from majority-left (65/31) to split down the middle, 48/47

To repeat a quote I have seen repeated in dozens of email signatures (below the pronouns, of course!)

"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

> Twitter/X is actually a balanced discourse site now.

That might have a chance at being true if the owner didn't flood the network with deliberate misinformation and block dissenting opinions.

That was true previously as well. The most substantial difference between Jack and Musk is that the former was better at maintaining a professional demeanor. His biases were no fewer, his tenure at Twitter was markedly more censorious, but he was better at presenting himself. This seems to be the main distinguishing feature of American liberalism as opposed to conservatism. The point about misinformation is another place this can be seen. There's a lot of misinformation from both mainstream political camps in the US, but liberal misinformation is more dressed-up whereas conservative misinformation is downright clownish--Alex Jones being a good example.

this is too funny. comparing X before and after Musk takeover… wowsa… can’t believe this is even a thing anyone can say/write with a straight face

I see it more of a freedom from versus freedom to distinction. Under Elon’s Twitter you have the freedom to say anything (*almost anything — no tweeting about where his jet is lol). Under jack’s Twitter you have freedom from being bombarded with rape threats if you disagree with the wrong influencer.

Personally I prefer the freedom from regime but the nice part of the divide is everyone gets to choose for themselves. I’ve seen more of the people whose create content Im interested in (scientists, artists, authors etc) migrating to Bluesky but it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few years.

Honestly, I've thought about signing up for Bluesky on a similar basis, that a lot of the people I want to follow for my hobbies are there.

I'm not sure what you mean about the rape threats. Is there a documented increase in such things on Xitter?

> That was true previously as well.

No, it really wasn't. Don't even try and pretend please. Musk was spreading deepfakes about Kamala for example without labeling them as such. Jack and Musk are not comparable.

That's exactly the kind of thing I'm criticizing him for. Musk posted an obviously satirical deepfake of Harris. It was clownish. It was unprofessional. Jack wouldn't have done that.

And yet, the response to this from liberals wasn't to chide him on that alone, which would have been plenty enough. It was to pretend that this wasn't obvious satire, that it was an attempt at spreading misinformation. The reaction was far more disingenuous than the bad joke.

FFS buddy, it *was* an attempt at spreading misinformation, there was no warning it was a deepfake or a parody. Stop trying to make excuses and apologize for his conduct, it doesn't make you look good let alone 'fair' like you probably think you're being.

No it wasn’t. The video didn’t make any attempt at believability, and Musk posted it with the text “this is awesome” followed by laughing emojis. The joke could not have been more telegraphed. You may as well complain that SNL is misleading voters.

I don’t care about looking fair. I care about being honest. I’m sorry if you think I’m not doing enough to support your team.

> The joke could not have been more telegraphed.

See, when you're apologizing and defending this behavior, you're already in the wrong.

He violated his own platforms policies requiring such videos to be labeled. If you don't think that was deliberate to mislead people, you're incredibly naive. It's hardly the first time he's done that sort of thing.

> I care about being honest. I’m sorry if you think I’m not doing enough to support your team.

I care about being honest, you clearly don't since you champion liars. god this country is so screwed lol.

Where are the 400 million left leaning party members from to make up for the US?

Well first post I’ve seen was “punch a nazi” and then bunch of other hate towards right-wing.

Are people mad about anti-Nazi sentiments? I guess people’s memories really are short.

Pepperidge Farms remembers that Indiana Jones was the good guy.

I'm mad about calls for violence regardless who they are (esp. how quick everyone are to label someone)

Would you say the same thing in 1930’s Germany?

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