Meanwhile, Elon's Twitter Dumpsterfire
Nov. 10th, 2022 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aggienaut So for over a decade I've been saying I just don't understand twitter. I had a twitter account and occasionally I'd try to make use of it but I didn't see the point at all. I'd followed a bunch of people I knew, organizations I was involved with, or bee related things, and none of the posts were very interesting and whenever I tweeted something I'd get no kind of interactions at all with my post. Or I tried running a twitter account for the company I worked for in California and would try to post humorous takes on whatever was trending, with plenty of hashtags, that's what you're supposed to do right? Still nothing.
When Russia invaded Ukraine last February started following some accounts that seemed to have more timely and accurate news updates than the major news channels. I found this so reliable and useful I was quickly drawn in to checking twitter multiple times an hour for the latest. Gradually I followed more accounts that the accounts I was already following were frequently referencing.
As the months went by I picked up a few interesting ones updating on the cases against Trump, and then even some that were just posting about art, and several posting about history. I frequently retweet things mainly just so I can find them again later myself. I think occasionally even others have liked or retweeted my posts but I barely pay attention to that now. (you can follow me btw at https://twitter.com/arrrghonaut )
When it was first announced that Elon Musk was actually going to go through with it and buy twitter it wasn't inevitable that I'd be upset or want to throw in the towel, who knows maybe he'd do an alright job and I don't care who's running it.
However immediately, from the day he took over, my twitter feed has ceased to be a fascinating mix of Ukraine news and other things I find intriguing, but a morass of uninteresting stuff and even trolls. And even though I do not follow Elon Muskrat himself, his posts now regularly show up on my feed. I think he's changed the algorithms to among other things suppress pro-Ukraine accounts and have the algorithms treat his posts as super valued. Also, while I'd get the very occasional notification about a post from someone I didn't follow for some reason, maybe? before, now on a daily basis literally pornographic tweets from people (well bots I assume) are showing up in my phone's notifications. Like if someone else were to look at my phone's notifications they'd see these. I have done absolutely nothing that could give twitter reason to think I want anything to do with NSFW content. This is not okay.
And then of course, there's the whole fact that he butchered the content moderation staff just days before a major election and then urged people to vote republican the day before it. The world's richest man buying one of the biggest forums of public discourse and using it to overtly push a political agenda on the eve of an election is despicable.
People on twitter are talking alot about leaving, but the most-mentioned alternative, "mastadon," doesnt' seem to be getting people very enthused. Also one of my friends pointed out that you'll notice _no one_ is mentioning facebook as a viable alternative. Oh how the mighty have fallen. I remember when I thought facebook had won the internet and was now unassailable for all time.
Also this is kind of reminding me of the death of livejournal, similarly without a good replacement (I looked the other day at the number of comments per entry regular users of Dreamwidth were getting compared to people here and it was much lower).
Anyway, my feelings on Elon Muskovite turning Twitter into a hellscape are (A) hey I just got here!; and (B) well okay thanks for breaking my burgeoning twitter addiction I guess.
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Date: 2022-11-10 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-10 01:33 pm (UTC)Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ (https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=303).
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Date: 2022-11-10 01:33 pm (UTC)Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ (https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=303).
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Date: 2022-11-10 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-10 03:29 pm (UTC)I created a Twitter account years ago but have never used it so I think, given that I really do not like the new boss there, that I will deactivate it. You can't just delete it apparently but if it's deactivated for I don't know how long, it will eventually go away.
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Date: 2022-11-10 05:11 pm (UTC)I was just lamenting how DW never really did settle in. A few people are sticking hard to having left LJ, but most people I know (myself included) post to LJ and copy into DW if we remember.
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Date: 2022-11-10 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-10 07:59 pm (UTC)I have never had a Twitter account, but UGH!!! That's horrible that Elon has made such a mess of it. :P
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Date: 2022-11-12 12:49 pm (UTC)- Erulisse (one L)
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Date: 2025-11-28 01:59 pm (UTC)I've stayed on Twitter despite everything, just the others, maybe its my failure to find variety, but I haven't found quite the rich variety of discourse on the alternatives as I found on twitter .... that being said I feel like just in the last week Elon has broken the algorithm even more and finally possibly too much because now I'm primarily seeing a lot of nobody accounts posting obvious engagement bait and its really dumb