Thursday, July 13, 2023

Whither Twitter

Twitter tells me it's my twitterversary, 15 years since I first started tweeting. Not sure I'll make it to sweet sixteen.

No longer do tweets show up on this blog page. Twitter can't tell the difference between some AI engine slurping up tweets and their own display widget showing tweets on a weblog. Bill complains that he can no longer follow my Twitter as he refuses to set up an account on the site and you can't read tweets without one. Also I will soon lose access to TweetDeck without paying the $8/month that wouldn't solve the other problems. This is ignoring that fact that since Elon has taken over Twitter, the site has just become far less fun.

I have accounts on Mastodon and now Threads. The two combined have less that 100 followers compared to the 5400 I have on Twitter. Not sure how many of those 5400 are bots or people who no longer read twitter regularly. 

For now my tweets get imported into Mastodon which now appear on this blog page. Eventually once Threads gets proper web support and APIs I expect that will become the new twitter and I'll move there. We'll have to see.

4 comments:

  1. Did Twitter have actual problems that a new owner COULD HAVE tried to solve? If so, what were they and did Elon try to solve them? If so then what went wrong?

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  2. Twitter had the problem that lies, disinformation, hate speech, and the like weren't getting through as much as Elon wanted. Presumably, he's happy with the result.

    Threads is a giant steal-your-data-and-sell-it-to-advertisers machine, so I'd recommend Mastodon (from whence no personal data gets out).

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  3. The shutting out of spectators without an account has effectively closed Twitter also for me. Ironically, my main use for Twitter was following the musings of Elon Musk.

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  4. By the way, as far as I have read, Twitter actually was becoming barely profitable just before Elon took over. The claim that it was on the verge of bankruptcy seems to be nonsense.

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