X accounts are limited to 50 posts and 200 replies a day unless they pay | Hacker News Reader

X accounts are limited to 50 posts and 200 replies a day unless they pay

engadget.com

57 pointscdrnsf52 comments

Bluesky, threads, mastodon, and everything else built on activitypub AT, etc. are still there. You can leave X behind; the only thing stopping you is the other people who could also leave X but are still there because you’re there. There are real problems with the fediverse, but they are solvable and the biggest problem is the social connections/stickiness. So start with that!

I’d argue that microblogging inherently trends towards social pathologies, since there is little room for nuance in such short-form text. Not to mention that those other platforms already have their own established cultures and shibboleths, where not everyone coming from a competing network will feel comfortable. If someone manages to shake off an X addiction, they might be better off giving up microblogging entirely.

Microblogging in the fediverse somehow does not trend towards social pathologies. I just don’t ever feel the need to shorten my posts because the word limit is generally generous enough for significant nuance. It’s like HN: comments tend to be short just because of the medium, but longer comments with significant nuance are possible.

> Microblogging in the fediverse somehow does not trend towards social pathologies.

The fediverse, too, trends towards social pathologies; something or some things is causing craziness on all the mentioned platforms, even if the exact manifestations vary. For example, well into 2023, almost daily among the top-ranking posts on Mastodon was one advocating for harsh anti-Covid measures: e.g. that live music and theatre should never have been permitted again, insisting on masking in public at all times, etc. This was after countries lauded for their responsible Covid response had already returned to normality. The fact that posts like these could get such a welcome reception, sending them to the top, says something about how highly online and out of touch a significant portion of fediverse users are.

Mastodon isn't a single web platform like Reddit. The phrase "among the top-ranking posts on Mastodon" is meaningless. There is no "the top" of Mastodon.

It's a federated communication protocol, like email and SMS. There's very much a culture for each, regardless of whether or not it's hosted on a single server. Most users don't even know whether or not a communication system is federated, they just know they can use it to send messages and that there are social protocols around using it.

I’m obviously talking about the main Mastodon instance and its Trending view [0]. The main instance has cultural prestige for the other instances that form the fediverse as people here normally define it and is regarded as exemplifying its values. But we’ve seen you disingenuously try to downplay issues here with the fediverse before.

[0] https://mastodon.social/explore

You know there are tens of thousands of instances yet you chose to use language that implied that you were speaking about "Mastodon" as a whole, and then you chose to make judgements about fediverse users as a whole, based on a description of a single post on a single instance some unknown number of years ago. That is at best disingenuous, and at worse intentionally deceptive.

>But we’ve seen you disingenuously try to downplay issues here with the fediverse before.

Who is "we?" Jumping immediately into the defensive and accusatory personal attack? I don't know what caused you to harbor this sort of grudge against the fediverse and people who use it but get over it. Just let people have their space, and find your own.

Try reading my post again. I wasn’t making a judgement about “a single post” but a trend that lasted months and months.

But look at the Trending view right now (and tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that). The Mastodon instance with the highest prestige isn’t showing from those “tens of thousands of instances” a wide variety of subject matter discussed in longform, nuanced manner. It’s showing mainly political posts and memes. It depicts the fediverse as pathological a forum as any of the other microblogging platforms, even if the particular politics differ.

Even if some people across instances use the fediverse to discuss other matters, a healthy ecosystem would be one that discourages highly-online stuff, not does the opposite and boosts its visibility.

> Just let people have their space, and find your own.

The whole topic of this subthread was about people leaving X and possibly finding another space. I’m showing why those people might not “find their own” in the fediverse (or at Threads or Bluesky, for that matter) and would be better off avoiding microblogging entirely.

> almost daily among the top-ranking posts

Why would you even care about the top-ranking posts when it doesn’t even have an algorithmic timeline? It’s not like an algorithm will push such top-ranking posts onto your timeline. Your timeline remains under your control, with sophisticated muting and blocking capabilities.

Mastodon developers have repeatedly stated that the fediverse is not just a protocol but a distinct culture and values, and federating with their servers means accepting that culture and values. So, even if one’s timeline doesn’t show those posts, the posts are still normative for the overall culture.

This isn't a good argument. I did move most of my social activity off X on to other platforms, but despite months of effort I had little luck persuading other people to do the same.

It's not because they love Musk, the network effects are just too strong. Media companies mostly set up Bluesky accounts, for example, but they get a fraction of the traffic there. Many elected officials just stayed on X, or if they set up accounts on other platforms they underused or abandoned those which did not get a lot of traffic. World leaders are all still on X. I think it's foolish to blame individual users for 'not leaving hard enough' when all but a very few of them have too little influence to overcome the 'gravity' of the market leader.

If you're actually creating content or running a business of some sort, it's hard to drop a platform, but for your average user it's fairly easy.

It's hard to tell how many people have left, but it's clearly significant.

Nobody I know personally uses X. If you want real network effects, try Whatsapp. X can be ignored without missing anything.

I just told you why the network effects are so strong and you responded with anecdata about your personal social circle. You're ignoring the fact that X remains the platform where countries and many other official entities post official statements of policy first, and much other news breaks there first.

I left X after it became a wastland. Most of what was in my feed were accounts I did not followed and really really did not wanted to follow.

People tend to think there's a demand for a Twitter-like platform, so if they make a new Twitter-like platform they can compete with it.

There isn't. There's demand for Twitter, specifically. Just like you wouldn't "switch" from HN to a hypothetical clone site, people don't switch from Twitter to Blue Sky. Blue Sky and Fediverse are separate platforms with separate identities and cultures and their surface resemblance to Twitter doesn't really mean anything. Twitter could be just as well "replaced" by anything else from Usenet to SMF to a literal megaphone.

I've tried the fediverse but beef and coconut aren't there, so there's just no point.

Yea, I really want bluesky,mastodon to succeed in the sense of actually having people who are talking about things that I am interested in and more connections in general.

I would also wish to point out lemmy is an interesting project too.

I don't really use twitter anyway but I was frequent on bluesky but didn't really get any responses whatsoever sometimes so I ended up not using it either.

Hackernews and some other forums are honestly just about it for me at a certain point but I do wish to relook at bluesky and mastodon

My main reason for not switching to mastodon:

Direct messages are a UX and privacy nightmare IMHO.

Are they more private on X?

LinkedIn is good. It’s not addictive. All your friends have one already. You can post whatever you want but nobody does because they think it’s work related. If you do post whatever you want you will begin to filter who is real and who is ai slop. You can’t spend more than like ten minutes a day looking at it because most of it is too boring to care. Friend me on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmaiken

>LinkedIn is good.

No, it's really not. It's full of the most vapid posts imaginable increasingly written by AI.

I think that's the joke. Linkedin content is so terrible you'll never get addicted to it.

Them posting their own profile made me think it was serious, but I'm coming around to your point.

I would say it's the most obvious part of the joke

Poe's law etc.

Linkedin won't let me log in to my 15-year-old account without sharing government ID to Persona.

And if you need to post more than 50 tweets and 200 replies a day, you should probably pay a therapist before you pay Elon. Sincerely, that kind of engagement with total strangers is just terrible in the long haul. I've never seen anyone with that kind of usage who seemed to be happy and well-adjusted.

as much as i hate X and Elon i kinda agree. the only people posting that much are going to be business accounts and im pretty sure that’s who this is targeting

Business accounts, bots, and flop influencers

With few exceptions (shared corp accounts like apple's) 50 posts should just be the hardcap overall.

You don't have 200 good insights per day that the world absolutely needs to hear...

It’s really sad that microblogging evolved to become „I share a message expected to reach as far as possible“. The interesting about microblogging was the small scale imho, you have a few friends you’re sharing content with. Yes it is public but you don’t expect your posts to be seen by everyone. That has completely been lost

You seem to think "micro" refers to the audience, not the content. Assuming the historical context at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging is accurate, it's not clear that it ever was meant to have a limited audience.

What you're describing is more akin to what MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, etc were like back in the day, which is quite a different thing than tumblr or twitter.

No what I’m describing is the experience of microblogging when it was a thing. You were sharing short status updates and thoughts mostly for your friends and niche of interests. Which is why people didn’t have much problems sharing personal things, your expectations regarding who will read your posts were mostly around people you know IRL or online. That of course changed a lot once it became about engagement and monetizing an audience. I would watch a movie, think of something about it, share it, and the expectations wasn’t „I want the world to know what my thoughts on movie X are“. It was „I think friend Y will like that, will be fun to discuss when I see them next time“.

But yes there is some sort of overlap with how people were using Facebook and others.

I personally think the retweet feature is one of the worst thing ever invented in the social media space exactly because it goes against the audience expectations of the author

So much more than my average of zero posts and zero replies per year.

Heh, my experience with Twitter.

Signed up, got a notice 30 seconds later I needed to give my phone number.

Me: fuck that, what do the need that for.

Twitter a week later: Oh, by the way we gave all your phone numbers to hackers because we suck.

Next step: don’t follow any accounts, be greeted with a feed that’s filled to the brim with ragebait content posted mostly by bots and the people who act like them.

I would pay to see no more than 50 posts per account per year in my feed.

(And 0 replies)

Not sure if this really matters that much.

If one don't pay, the algorithm (I believe?) ranks your comment at the bottom of the blue check marks and it's rare to get any sort of engagement.

I expect the same algorithm ranking with new posts.

I read but rarely engage as what's the point.

Just leave. If you’re staying because of your ‘audience’, you’ll find a new one elsewhere.

Staying on X associates you with crypto scams, rage bait content and worse.

I'm literally only staying for two reasons.

1) People I know personally follow me and if I delete my account my username will be farmed by bots and I don't want those people harassed and scammed.

2) Following Aya Nishitani.

Why is anyone using X? There's so many good alternatives now.

If you're posting to social media as a casual user more than 50 times a day, you're either a spam bot or severely mentally ill. Those numbers are hit by 24/7 news organizations with large social media teams on staff.

They obviously have the means to pay for professional-level access.

Hitting the limit should unironically be a sign to go outside and touch grass.

Would be a lot even for a news org TBH

The implementation is buggy. Very many users report being banned while being nowhere near the usage limit: https://devcommunity.x.com/t/your-request-looks-like-it-migh...

Apparently, even paying users are being prevented from posting.

seems like a good move. If the lame rebranding, platform enshittificaiton, or Musk's dubious political alignment and all around repulsiveness didn't turn them off yet, and they're actually posting that much that's pretty much a captive audience. Might as well squeeze some cash outta them.

trying to monetize the botnets

I stopped paying for a blue checkmark when I noticed so many paid accounts were managed by AI bots anyways, and my account is shadow-banned when I post unpopular opinions.

Free speech, for those that pay.

I could see myself paying for a service like X, so that the service quality would be higher due to all the participants putting some money in. And that would be a nice way to keep bots out of the network.

Bluesky is a leftist echo chamber, which is irritating in its own way.

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