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Notes -
Not in such basics as 'not loading', but qualitatively the twitter experience is now way worse, to the point I don't really use it anymore it's so bad. The prioritisation of blue check replies has made replies on any post that becomes popular totally worthless, since it's mostly bots/meaningless garbage. For You is totally worthless as it just serves up the worst kind of lowest common denominator internet slop, and while one can (and I usually did) just use the other tab for accounts you follow, twitter alongside mostly giving me my own follows' posts used to regularly suggest interesting and worthwhile smaller posts and accounts. Now the garbage rises to the top, the cream to the bottom. Checking back now having been away for a few weeks I've been followed by 50+ scam bots.
So while it still functions what made the app useful and good has basically been totally ruined. I think monetisation was a dreadful idea since it gives strong incentives to post slop in order to rise to the top, and the same goes for allowing people to pay to boost their nonsense. No doubt the slop existed before Elon, but I at least never really had it pushed to me by twitter before, it became relentless so no I don't bother. Elon's own account is really the embodiment of the kind of place twitter has become. It would probably be good again if they summarily IP banned anyone who had ever bought a blue check.
I have no idea whether any of this has anything to do with the staff that were sacked, but I think it's a cautionary tale against tech bro 'disruptors' and the 'move fast and break things' philosophy. For all people rightly say 'twitter isn't real life', it used to be a pretty important gathering place for influential and interesting people in the UK politics, policy and journalism sphere. Now it tends to be like scrolling a big subreddit in 2014.
My experience is of course the opposite.
I see way more discussion about "real" topics like engineering. Twitter used to be mostly pop culture and culture war nonsense. Not it seems a lot more like real human beings having actual, real discussions (well...not really discussions. I still think that twitter/X are the wrong format for conversation).
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Haven't noticed that but I must be reading different parts of it, and I usually don't read the replies beyond the first dozen or so. Even that is mostly frivolous...
I feel a major FMO case here, I've had my twitter acct for years and still have 2 followers (that's how it should be, it's a strictly r/o account).
I must miss the point here - what's wrong with Elon's account? I mean except the fact that miltibillionaire and owner of several huge enterprises spends so much time on stupid tweets, but it's his time not mine, why would I tell him how to spend it? Otherwise, I think his content is exactly what this format is for, or at least what I have always thought it's for. I know some people put longreads and effortposts into twitter, which is imho insane - just get a substack, dude! - but I never thought it should or ever would be the norm.
Not sure what it's supposed to caution us against though. Do you really imagined twitter would be some kind of philosopher's kingdom if not Musk? To me, it always have been a mess since the inception and that's the whole point. If "influential people", whoever they are, can't find a better place to gather and talk about serious stuff than twitter I think it's not Musk's problem. They are just doing it wrong (ah, if that were the only thing they are doing wrong...) - and also imagining that you would do politics, policy or journalism with pre-Musk moderation in place makes me deeply sad. Though as "deeply sad" is my default setting now thinking about anything related to UK politics, it's not much change, admittedly.
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