Why am I still on Twitter?
therectangle.substack.com
therectangle.substack.com
I never had a Twitter account, so perhaps my ignorance is showing.
Because a lot of important people are on it
It's the social media platform that is the least "managed" by PR. In other words, you're more likely to have the person from the profile actually using the app rather than PR. I could imagine Mark Cuban is sitting on the can writing his on tweets, which is not true for his other communications.
Because you can actually get paid if you produce a lot of engagement
Or was your comment more rhetorical? Because there are valid reasons someone would use it.
Do you think you're more likely to get your speech censored on Twitter compared to TikTok, Instagram, Reels, Facebook, Bluesky, etc? I don't get this hangup like "oh they lied about free speech" when literally every other social media platform is worse.
This seems less relevant each day. Even here on HN, Twitter used to be on front page almost every day. Now it is pretty rare. Which makes sense when most people are not able to see Twitter threads (if it works for non-logged at all).
> when literally every other social media platform is worse
This is based on?
Twitter is incredibly influential. Newspapers quote tweets generously. I've seen entire articles based on the tweets of someone with barely any followers, often self serving, used as cover. For instance you'll see "widely criticized... X user [...] posted 'this is unprecedented'"
You can not like Twitter and hold whatever political opinion you want, but don't pretend Twitter has little influence.
> This is based on?
I don't know, I see literal Nazis on the platform and I don't see them on any other social media platform, so maybe they have a more permissive policy? Doesn't seem an unreasonable measure of how much free speech is allowed. Similarly, I see people calling the owner a Nazi very prominently on my timeline and trending. I don't think you'll see TikTok trends criticizing China last very long.
Again, you can not like the platform and want to see fewer Nazis, but don't gaslight me by pretending other social media companies outside of 4-chan are somehow more dedicated to free speech.
I don't recognize the authors comment that it is only about Bluesky. It likely all depends on who you follow.
I have now been a few months on Bluesky and havent looked back. I noticed many thinkers I followed did continue on Bluesky and I noticed there is a much less toxic community which is a big win for my mental health.
I must be doing something wrong because millions of people don't do this every single day.
TL;DR: "I can't quit".
I think the alternative was worse. Basically unseen employees at Twitter get to make judgement calls on who is noteworthy, with not much objective reasoning. I've seen people with 1k followers have a blue checkmark and then others with hundreds of thousands of followers not have one. And you even had instances where blue check marks were removed as punishment.
The only reasoning that made sense was politics, if you were a left wing author with a self published book of poems and 1k followers you had a good shot at a checkmark, and if you were right wing, you would have that check mark dangled over you. No clear process. And considering how influential these social media platforms are and how checkmarks effect discoverability, it made a huge difference. Instagram had the same thing and there were even stories of "influencers" sleeping with Meta employees to get verified.
Now anyone willing to pay a few dollars per month can have the same reach. There's a reason Instagram basically has this pay to play model and I think it's far better.
Also the fact that Twitter is the only (?) social media that pays its creators directly. No convoluted process, just if you're verified you get a check every once in a while and from what I've seen it's pretty substantial. The idea that social media companies should pay their creators has been around a while. It seemed deeply unfair that these billion dollar companies were created on the back of free labor. Reddit had worthless "gold" as a reward, but come on. This was a huge long overdue development in social media landscape that I don't think gets enough attention.
Meanwhile behind the curtain the most impactful of the activity is profiling people. Nothing you say accomplishes anything you hoped for. You watch toddlers get machine gunned and by that action you are now an anti semite who shouldn't be hired. Expressed distaste for tarifs aimed at people in sweatshops earning 1 buck per day? How dare you!
Is this the best we can do??? In the old days the debate would arrive at a plan then we would write and experiment towards the goal. Now we dump driftwood into the ocean and pretend we are building a boat.
Like the topic, I have no idea why I'm even writing this. I should be crafting a review mechanism or at least write up a design for one. Its pretty funny if you ask me.