I don't remember direct links to Twitter being so prevalent until recently. Is it... time to reconsider this? Twitter no longer seems like a reliable source for anything except Elon Musk himself, since he presumably won't suddenly suspend himself, or block links to things he wants to link to.
Musk's extreme lack of credibility aside, why would anyone use Twitter for this when there are already many very popular alternatives that have been around for years?
I really wonder if Musk has thought this through. For years it's been a casual habit to use Tweetbot. Now I doubt if I'll download official twitter or go to the website - the platform is essentially dead to me.
Dunno if I buy that personally. I don't use X/Twitter at all any more (lost interest prior to Elon buying it), and I only see it pop up in links on HN.
Now that Nitter.net has gone away (to see replies on X/Twitter), I don't even bother clicking on the Twitter stories any more.
I have a hard time believing that bots were using the free API and Twitter wasn't able to shut them down easily. Even a mediocre programmer could do that.
Anyway, almost nothing Elon Musk has said about Twitter seems plausible and this also doesn't.
I'm on the fence if he's trying to just generate as much cash flow as possible (after driving away so much ads money) or if he's actively trying to run Twitter into the ground.
Add to that that Twitter is now letting go of office space as well. Now some of that is due to layoffs, but it could also mean Mr. Musk is not even expecting RTO to work at Twitter, or at least not to the extent he planned.
It was best to stay on Twitter, but Elon has worked long and hard to change that.
Just to remind everyone, Twitter arose as an alternative to RSS/Atom feeds, whose main purpose wasn't the text message, but the link.
Twitter where you can't link makes no sense. At least not before a long evolution to make it so. And we've not had this evolution happen, and Elon fired the people who could've implemented it in a reasonable timeframe.
I think Twitter's engagement metrics are falling so Elon is tweeting like a troll in order to try to boost attention to the site/app.
I think the initial wave of engagement from all the attention created by the sale and layoffs are gone. A lot of people realized that Twitter is worse now than before, so they've stopped using it. That's my guess.
I visit Twitter occasionally and all I see are far-right groups, crypto bros and grifters, and some AI is taking over the world tweets here and there.
Are they trying to drive users away? I was initially interested in what Musk might do to improve Twitter - I’ve since logged off, haven’t used it in a couple of weeks, and haven’t missed it one bit. No plans to return or even use an alternative. He talks about doing good for humanity, and if he drives people away from the tribalism of Twitter and tanks it, he may actually succeed at that goal!
The acquisition saw Twitter experience quite a bit of self-inflicted brain drain. The fact that they have no legal/compliance dept and are making moves in violation of labor laws in multiple countries and in likely violation of Twitter's consent decree with the FTC also bodes poorly. That plus large personalities continuing to embrace Mastodon to the point that Twitter started blocking links to it.
On a personal note, Twitter feels more like Musk's personal platform now. Every single time I visit the Twitter website, the first tweet I see is Elon's. I don't follow him. Two people I follow happen to follow him. No matter how many times I select that the tweet isn't relevant, a new Elon tweet shows up. The only way to get rid of him from my timeline is to block him or unfollow everyone I follow that follows him, which seems pretty absurd.
I suspect it's related to the recent news that Elon Musk purchased Twitter (Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twit...). I think some folks may be curious about alternatives to Twitter given the unknown nature of changes to come.
Twitter was actually remarkably and usually stable. Note the past tense, it became unstable now after months of Musk ownership. You know, after he demanded fast changes.
Twitter was a dumpster fire before Musk, but Musk has decided to pour gasoline in that dumpster.
I don't care if Twitter succeeds or fails, but I think that if the media and other entities stop using Twitter as their sole method of communication, that can only be a great thing for everybody.
If people stopped using Twitter as a source for reporting, that would also be a great thing. Twitter is a unique world, not representative of the larger world.
It's interesting in this day and age to see a platform degrade at the speed twitter did in quality, stability, user experience, etc. I suppose what's the most surprising is that it seems it was intentional. I wonder how much Musk has been sandboxed at Tesla and SpaceX? Perhaps he was encouraged to do the twitter deal to get him away from the other two companies. Like a shiny object to occupy him and his time.
I think Musk fails to understand what the 'social' in social media stands for, if people can no longer freely link to content elsewhere on the web then that's the end of Twitter. Social media exists by virtue of its inbound and outbound links.
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