>What’s wrong with Twitter? Tiktok, Instagram, Snapchat... Mastodon?
Err, the fact that none of them offer a way to find other queer users in the same area as you. This seems like a fairly basic point. If you're living in a small town, you're not going to be able to easily find other queer people near you on any of those apps.
But why do you think that teens will be magically be safer on Snapchat or other such apps? This really seems to just be based on an excessive fear of 'gay' apps.
>Why are you being so strange about a normal word?
In general he's obviously tweeted both before and after joining twitter. So if a 'pronouncement' is just anything he said on twitter, the answer to your question is obvious.
>I can surround myself with 50 POC and 20 LGBTQ+ people and still gain no diversity of thoughts.
If you only ever follow one certain demographic, this tool could be useful to find some other demographics to mix in. You may not get difference of, say, political opinions, but you will absolutely get different perspective on things.
Wanting to have gay people on your Twitter, specifically, doesn't nullify the fact that there's diversity amongst white males. Nobody's community is being threatened by this app. It's just a way to mix it up.
> Can anybody make a good argument as to why Twitter (in its current form) isn’t a major detriment to society?
Basically no one actually uses twitter. I only know one person in real life who uses twitter.
Twitter's problem is that 'media types' really like twitter, for one reason or another, and tend to blow everything that happens there out of proportion for off-platform engagement.
Personally, I really like twitter. I carefully curate my Twitter experience to follow people I'm interested in, mute people and words I don't care for (it's great never having to see "NFT" on twitter!), and block people who are actively harmful. I'm left with a pretty positive experience that has good community and funny jokes. That's how I use it.
Twitter isn't healthy for _anyone_. Neither is the vast majority of social media. The way in which most sites currently structure interactions lends itself quite naturally to misinformation, extreme polarization, and resulting anxiety.
I've personally witnessed the effect on reasonably well educated adults in my life; I can only imagine how much worse it must be for those with less general experience and knowledge.
> My experience of twitter is almost entirely defined by the people I follow
This is probably, broadly speaking, false.
Maybe it was once true, and maybe it should be true, but I guess it’s more likely that most people (including you) see and interact with all the people you follow, interacting with all the people they follow (retweets, etc.) interacting with all the people they follow.
3 degrees of separation.
If you never saw any tweets other than the immediate people you follow tweeting to each other, then perhaps… but, that’s not how twitter works.
…and then on top of that, how did you end up following those people? Personal friends? Or perhaps, via twitters moderated hash tags?
That’s different moderation, not no moderation.
What you’re describing is something closer to signal/WhatsApp groups; different, much less moderated personal groups. Sure. Good for what it is…
> My view is that Twitter has a big problem with harassment. I want to know what Twitter plans to do about it.
I don't know if Twitter does that,but they could have a function so that people only receive tweets from people they follow at first place,while keeping their tweet public.
Anyway, people take twitter way too seriously. It's the internet, anonymous people are going to be mean.
He certainly does not want to encourage conversation.
>Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities;
It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does. That's not a community, that's an echo chamber with no disagreeing, no joking, no comments.
It's okay if he doesn't like Twitter and doesn't want to use it, but wishing for it to go away makes me uncomfortable. Why should he care if others use Twitter ?
I, for one, am happy with Twitter being alive even though I don't use it.
> Is that ability so bad? In real life, people can refuse to socialize with you too
It depends on what you think Twitter is for. I think it’s the equivalent of the public town square.
In that context I don’t think it’s appropriate.
If you start a public conversation it’s ok to walk away from it (equivalent of ignore) but it is not ok to stop certain groups you don’t like from continuing the conversation (equivalent of a real block).
In a sense you don’t own the conversation and once you have made a contribution everyone else is free to talk about your contribution.
> Twitter is a public place. I don't understand your analogy.
The point is that in order to meet other people, you have to go out into the public. But that doesn't mean you want to meet with and talk with anyone and everyone out in the public. It's a terrible tradeoff if the only way you can get pleasant social interaction with others is to also suffer unpleasant social interaction with strangers who want to argue with you.
None of us designed Twitter. We have to take it as it is. Twitter is public, yes, but that's not an excuse for you personally to debate with every stranger you happen to disagree with. That's not on Twitter, that's on you.
> I am a fan of Twitter. It is a much better social network then Facebook and Instagram.
I mean. You have the right to your opinion. But... really?
I understand that the sentiment is “Twitter is mostly what you make it“, but it was so incredibly toxic that I was stunned to the point where I almost became radicalised against the ideology that was pervasive at the time.
Even now I am sensitive to it.
Facebook in comparison never had strangers piling on me telling me I am worthless and invalid based on my race and gender.
Not that any of them are fantastical beacons of acerbic communication which puts such a high emphasis on civility as hacker news does. But to call twitter the best of this breed is, I feel, speaking from a far different experience than my own.
> My own experience of Twitter... it’s transformed from a pleasant place…
yep. this is what many of these people just continually fail to understand.
it’s just not fun being around abusive, abrasive, anti-social people constantly.
its not complicated. it’s not scandalous. it’s not shocking. people don’t enjoy being around anti-social rude people.
when they’re given an alternative where the promise is less shitty behaviors (the current iteration seems to be mastodon) then people go there, and this drives a certain group of people crazy.
what we should be asking is why it bothers them so strongly when some people say “i’m personally going to move away from that rude abrasive person over there.”
why are they so insistent that we spend our free time around abrasive assholes? they’re adamant about this. why?
> I use Mastodon Social and it has none of these problems because it doesn't aim to monetize the users of the platform.
But it still does the likes & retweets part, right? Because I agree with the comment you replied to that that is the problem, not the intention behind doing it.
I'm unsure whether people would use Twitter (or Mastodon for that matter) if it wasn't there. I believe the real-time and constant feedback of belonging to some culture is what drives usage of social media platforms, and in turn influences what people present as (and possibly what they become) because they want positive feedback and want to avoid negative feedback.
> None of these suggestions replace what Twitter offers as a whole
So? I think it’s clear that the accent here was not on twitter replacement as a whole, but on the decentralized options. And it’s fine to give up some functionality of a service when choosing an alternative. Especially when the reason for the switch is the unbearable user experience.
Sometimes there might not be any alternative, and that’s also fine. I stopped using social networks and youtube years ago and I feel much better than before. It felt like I was missing out something, but this feeling didn’t last long.
> a) it is transitory and people won't tend to remember it and harangue you about it years later
I think this is a feature and not a bug. I don’t want to see a carefully curated representation of the past.
There are plenty of other social networks for you if that is what you want.
Or you could contribute anonymously if you want to say something transitory.
> people who don't like what you're saying only have a limited ability to harass you.
I think that’s true on Twitter as well for the most part.
What Twitter does that is different is it still allows the people you don’t like to participate in the general conversation.
Certain groups hate this and want to deny other groups the right to speak.
> surely we deserve better tools to prevent ourselves being harassed.
I think the problem is people want to benefit from the upside of having a public conversation but still want to carefully control it and I don’t think that’s healthy for society.
Again, if you are happy to forego the upside you can always contribute anonymously.
> Yes, those tools will be abused in some cases; but all tools can be abused
Err, the fact that none of them offer a way to find other queer users in the same area as you. This seems like a fairly basic point. If you're living in a small town, you're not going to be able to easily find other queer people near you on any of those apps.
But why do you think that teens will be magically be safer on Snapchat or other such apps? This really seems to just be based on an excessive fear of 'gay' apps.
>Why are you being so strange about a normal word?
In general he's obviously tweeted both before and after joining twitter. So if a 'pronouncement' is just anything he said on twitter, the answer to your question is obvious.
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