I don't hate it, which is exactly why i do not want Musk to buy it and potentially make it worse.
Elon Musk | Owner of X
- Thread starter Pogue Mahone
- Start date
Out of interest. Can you list some positives that Twitter brings to your life? Twitter can be an unbearably negative place and it seems like you’ve gone deep. Squabbling with randomers on there has got to be bad for mental health.
It often breaks news well before it reachesTV or standard web articles is one I can think of.
Was hostile takeover actually possible?
Exactly. Twitter has been a massive part of the collective dumbing down of public discourse reducing everything to a character-limited hot take. Of course, it's not the only thing and the trend continues without Twitter but Twitter amplifies the worst of social media and makes it too easy for discourse to fall into the sewer. It does have some positives, such as the updates on Ukraine but overall, its probably the worst of all social media sites by a large amount.
Naw, there was a very noticeable difference in Trump's ability to influence everyday conversation when he was on Twitter. Every major news site would constantly report on his twittering and it would shape a ton of what I'd hear from people on a daily basis. His press releases have nowhere near the reach he had when he was on twitter.
As stated above, because it dumbs down every form of conversation more than any other social media and limits any form of discussion. It rewards some snarky post with "likes" and "retweets" and any intelligent analysis has to be linked to anyway. Numbered threads are both tiresome to click through and still limited even when people make 25-30 posts on a topic. It's definitely not "one of the best sites out there" when it comes to any form of discussion and its overall effect has been just to feed into and magnify the short attention span of youth these days.
Yeah obviously it’s not for thought provoking discussion but it has its place. That’s like complaining Instagram doesn’t provide a platform for in depth movie reviews.
This is pretty much that.
No other social media site is geared that much towards hot takes that need to be created as quickly as possible and destroy as much nuance as possible. It's a problem everywhere, but twitter seems to try to maximise it.
Is it? It seems like management will be accepting the offer.
The reason it has overstated influence in politics is all the journalists spend all day on it. They share their own hot takes as well as curate the site to find narratives that sells. Facebook has far more people using the site and commenting/arguing/debating on news but the people who produce the content don't rush to facebook to share their every opinion and/or thing they heard on the grapevine.
IMO they are because they see a hostile takeover as inevitable, irrespective of what they do. Might as well do it now instead of later to avoid a protracted public spat with Musk.
On a pro-con analysis, I just see Twitter's cons far outweighing any pros it offers. Instagram doesn't replace intelligent discussions sites like message boards (Redcafe) and viable news sites (Atlantic, newspaper sites) and sites that have more accountability because you have your real name attached (Facebook) like Twitter does. Insta's place in the digital ecosystem fulfills a niche without really negating anything else like Twitter does. There are negatives to all social media but Twitter is the worst and the bathroom stall wall of the internet.
Sure. But I don’t see how becoming aware of a news story an hour or two before it’s on telly makes anyone’s life any better.
I do spend a fair bit of time on there. I found some good people to follow throughout the pandemic and you can definitely see stuff on “science Twitter” that could take weeks to hit the journals.
I’ve made it a policy not to interact with anyone though. The bickering on there is insane. It’s bad enough on the caf but we’re our own little echo chamber, with excellent moderation. Twitter’s the Wild West by comparison. Would be dreadful for my mood to spend any time arguing about politics with bob567775 in messages of 140 characters or less. Feck that.
It's not amazing. It's vile and heralding the end of society, but utterly predictable.
Making someone's life better is a high bar not many things in life can reach. But if you look at sites such as this one, a fairly substantial number of the narratives discussed in various threads are driven by Tweets. Most CE threads are, as is the Twitter transfer thread, as well as many in random threads in the United and Footy forums. The way Twitter (and IG) package information is generally ideal for follow on discussions elsewhere.
Perfect
That's only because people are too lazy to link to the actual article itself with an excerpt or write out a post of their own views and link to the article. If the Caf had a no twitter linking policy the discussion and topics would be just as good, but some people simply couldn't just spam lame tweets into thread.
The character limit forces even the usual people who talk normally otherwise to add something attention seeking to everything they tweet, because thats what the format is. You get sucked into making every tweet some kind of a hot take which ends up people spouting a lot of constant bullshit for the sake of it. I've rarely seen a 'normal' tweet apart from the informational sources and such. And that's like the best kind of personal accounts I am talking about who otherwise support good causes but still end up becoming attention seekers due to the format.
I don't hate it, use it regularly and it is a great source of being up to date with anything recent in whatever your interest is, but at the same time I have seen it so many people I knew previously or from personal lives become these typical 'agenda posters' who would find some out of the way opinion and keep banging on it because pretty much anyone active on twitter ends up starving for reactions, replies, QTs etc and that pretty much dumbs down the quality of any discussion and makes it unbearable. I don't think there's any topic whatsoever on which I've seen frequent 'level headed' debates, or balanced discussion without people constantly being on the extreme and going out of their logical thought process just to prove their point.
So yeah news and updates aside, it is an absolute cesspool for most part when it comes to being able to find any thoughtful, sensible or informative discussion. When it comes to discussing anything it is pretty much a banter playground at it's very best which is unbearable and toxic, hate mongering and all out politically driven propaganda at it's worst.
Yeah, probably. I've just seen enough shit to already be of the opinion that it's a pretty shitty place.
Sometimes I discover people who write good articles, and/or have interesting youtube channels, podcasts or streams on there. Some accounts are good to follow for silliness, humour or art.
I don't really use it that much, though. I'll have a couple of weeks where I'll browse and post for a bit, then a few weeks/months where I don't even open the site/app. I follow a lot of activists, independent journalists and such, and sometimes it's enough to make you lose faith in humanity. So it's good to take breaks and remind yourself that Twitter is not the real world, and that the discourse on there is not representative of society in general (except for MAGAs and Qanon idiots, they're terminally online and behave exactly the same on there as they do in the real world.)
The key word is narrative. Everything is reduced on there to short edgy hot takes. It's easy to create a narrative when by design you don't have to elaborate. And as I said it's the fact journalists and reporters curate that site for narratives which is a problem. To use football as an example, how many times do you see articles on news sites or television shows reference fan sentiment via tweets? It happens all the time but they never do the same thing regarding Facebook comments or reddit subs or football forums. All three of which is long-form text.
This was one of its biggest strengths in early days Twitter. It probably still is however for me it feels like they decided to start meddling with algorithms and trying to socially engineer things in a creepy way and now it’s lost that organic element to it and it feels like most of the stuff you see on there is just what Twitter is trying to push to you instead of what you’re actually interested in.
Almost none really. It's actually a cesspool of misinformation
Twitter's as good or bad as you want it to be really. All depends on the accounts you follow.
So he could be buying it to effectively buy a future president and get whatever he wants.
Or he could be buying it to try and genuinely revolutionise social media as he has said, which means combatting its main problem - Its massive boatloads of disinformation and use as a political manipulation tool for the far/alt-right. If he has some idea how to do that.
I've always got the impression he leans toward saving the world rather than destroying it so one can hope huh.
Or he could be buying it to try and genuinely revolutionise social media as he has said, which means combatting its main problem - Its massive boatloads of disinformation and use as a political manipulation tool for the far/alt-right. If he has some idea how to do that.
I've always got the impression he leans toward saving the world rather than destroying it so one can hope huh.
use it similarly to what forums (like this) are supposed to be used - the subreddit i used to post on got banned, so many of us moved to twitter, and basically 90% of my tweets/replies are for that same circle of people. the rest of it is gawking at something stupid some (relative) big name said or scrolling through a hysterical version of news.
I love it when billionaires buy (or create, or own) incredibly influential social media companies.
There's absolutely no way Musk is going to in any way combat alt-right disinformation. He's far more likely to facilitate it.
I don't see him becoming a champion of the far/alt-right personally, it could destroy him/his work.
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It’s… really happening…
First order get Trump back?
Feck
There's also a possibility that he's buying it at least partially because he's the thirstiest person in the world when it comes to online attention and will do almost anything just so he's in the center of it.
He’s already one of their poster boys.
He's said some daft things that they love to use and twist, but I'm not sure he's ever significantly gone out of his way to help their cause?
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https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elon-musk-to-acquire-twitter-301532245.html
This is the most naive post I’ve ever read.
So Musk actually going ahead with this eh.
From a political perspective this is as bad as it gets. He’s going to appease the libertarian far right because they’re the ones who will jerk him off the hardest.