I'm a New Yorker subscriber. The existence of this editorial and the fact someone there thought it was fit to publish is exactly why I'm so glad Twitter is slowly failing. I hope journalists break their addictions soon. Twitter was a net negative to every event mentioned in the article, and yet here's the author eulogizing it like a martyr.<p>"the [Twitter employees] I knew—they worked hard, their work mattered, and they never stopped trying. Not until the moment their screens went blank.”<p>The three claims in here are all true, but not in a positive way. I expect Twitter to go down in history with Thalidomide or DDT. Many people worked very hard on those with the best of intentions, but ultimately, they were poison.
I barely used Twitter before it became X, and I barely use it now. But before and now, I noticed the same thing in the dev circles I'm in (the Node/JS world):<p>* Immense hubris surrounding tech stacks/frameworks of choice, to the point where people outright lie about competing technologies<p>* Framework authors' non-stop boasting and clickbaiting about their tools or new shiney $599 courses (it's marketing, I get it)<p>* Extreme prejudice against people who have differing political views; political arguments are basically unavoidable on Twitter/X no matter who you follow -- and they are never productive<p>* People moral posturing about leaving Twitter/X for Mastodon when Elon took over. Of course, none of these people ever stopped using Twitter/X because it would have cost them their followers. It was pure lip service.<p>I saw really nasty behavior by noteworthy folks in this circle (people who work at Google/Meta/Vercel), and I know these people are smart, but it made me think that Twitter/X just brings out the worst in people, and I don't think Elon taking over really made that much of a difference in the content (at least in my experience).
I started using twitter again for the first time in years. It has actually been wonderful. But I've done something I different than my other social media. I only click or read stuff on AI from reputable people. I try to quickly scroll past anything else, no matter how much brain fights it. The result is I get tons of up to date information on AI and basically nothing else.<p>My main complaint is...I have to keep up the fight constantly, which is annoying. It does make me realize though, a curated social media app that _internally_ removes garbage is at least possible, and would be quite nice.
A good counterpoint to this is this post by Nate Silver (of 538 fame): <a href="https://www.natesilver.net/p/twitter-elon-and-the-indigo-blob" rel="nofollow">https://www.natesilver.net/p/twitter-elon-and-the-indigo-blo...</a><p>>Casey Newton hypothesizes that Musk bought Twitter essentially in order to destroy it. And guess what: maybe Musk wasn’t wrong. The Old Twitter kind of sucked, especially if you ever had the experience of dissenting from the consensus. It reinforced the worst impulses of the Indigo Blob, making it more partisan and rendering its institutions less effective.<p>>There were also a lot of great features of Twitter. It was terrific for professional networking, for real-time coverage of some types of events, for cultivating interests in niche subjects, and even for encouraging pithy writing (my brain will forever be programmed to think in 280-character segments). Unfortunately, we probably aren’t getting the New Twitter — er, the new X — that I would want; Musk’s performance has been haphazard and he has a lot of hang-ups that I don’t share. But to the Old Twitter, good riddance.
Seem to be forgetting that Twitter unrolled its ludicrous API policy and absurd rates well before Musk took over. I was trying to build a Twitter app using the api for at least a year before musk took over and I was never allowed to sign up. I had to “prove my use case” and wait to hear back from the powers to be [narrator: we didn’t]
> Twitter users of all stripes speak nostalgically about the platform affirmed what I’d long suspected: many Twitter users hate Twitter the way New Yorkers hate New York—they don’t.<p>Yeah!<p>Or... try this metaphor on for size... like ex-smokers hate smoking. That may be more apt. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, it's bad for me. Yeah, I'd be better off if I never started. Yeah, I miss the feeling it used to give me. Sure, a pathway in my brain, developed over years, misses the hit or endorphins when they aren't available.
> What We Lost When Twitter Became X<p>I wonder what fraction of humanity thinks the answer is "nothing", and I have no guess what that fraction might be.
I stopped using it since it required a login, and my experience has been uniformly positive. You really don't have to know what person Y is thinking about topic Z as quickly as possible.
I think the change was positive.<p>It helped revealing this: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files</a><p>Community Notes before X, but you can see them being applied everywhere including Musk's posts.
>Communities allowed Twitter to survive and even thrive despite being a money-losing business<p>Um, that's not how businesses work. I know that Elon isn't doing a good job, but the old system was clearly broken as well.
I don't know that we lost much; Twitter is was hugely problematic before Musk arrived. (The problems are not native to Twitter, but hip-shot social media in general.)<p>What we gained, though, is better visibility on one of the most toxic, wretched humans currently on our besieged Earth.<p>It should be clear to everyone that Musk is a dangerous lunatic. And for those who are confused on this point, your judgement is very, very suspect.
According to these legacy media outlets, Twitter was supposed to be <i>days</i> from total collapse and permanently going offline over a year ago.<p>And yet, here we are, more than a year later. The legacy media is completely detached from reality. You have to genuinely be in a bubble in a bubble in a bubble (or an idiot) or to not see the propaganda being peddeled.<p>The legacy media will continue giving Elon Musk all the free advertising he needs to finish disintermediating information away from the enemy class, and democratizing the citizenry.