On Twitter, briefly

A better article than I expected. Several reflection-worthy bits. What <i>does</i> it say about us when we pay so much attention to Twitter, Facebook, etc?

Anything I&#x27;ve heard or read Musk say about Twitter longer than a tweet seems to be positive from my perspective. The two themes I hear are the idea that it&#x27;s a &quot;town square&quot; and that this form of communication is crucial for society. To me this seems like trying to go against the belief&#x2F;conversation bubbles present by default on other social platforms. There are other aspects that will have to be dealt with such as how to monetize it to satisfy the private investors, or how it might be misused for other purposes. These other aspects don&#x27;t have to negate the first primary goals but rather find a way to co-exist. I can&#x27;t tell if the detractors (a) don&#x27;t believe the stated motivations, (b) don&#x27;t trust it will be done well, (c) have various other complaints&#x2F;beefs that outweigh the positives. I find it hard to argue that Musk won&#x27;t execute well given Tesla and SpaceX as priors.

Twitter is a small aquarium for very colorful goldfish. The aquarium protects goldfish from the reality, and gives them an illusion that they are (1) much bigger than they really are and that they are (2) clearly superior to other fish, such as tuna and sardine. The new owner wants to introduce some diversity and add tuna to the aquarium. I suggest he should add some crabs too.

I gotta keep asking the obvious question: Why won&#x27;t someone else build a Twitter?<p>Not a &quot;free speech&quot; Twitter, not a &quot;better&quot; Twitter, just... figuratively rebranded Twitter. Same concept, maybe different implementation details, some modest innovations, but give the people who want to leave a place to go.<p>The only answer I&#x27;ve ever gotten (that isn&#x27;t solvable by being good at software engineering) is, &quot;network effects!&quot; but... now is the moment, if ever there was a moment, where the network is most fragile on Twitter.<p>Give people a place to go for a &quot;Twitter Classic&quot; experience, before the rudeness and hate get re-platformed!<p>Whoever does this, I feel confident in saying, will be a millionaire. I dunno if there are any more &quot;Social Media&quot; billionaires left, but millionaire? That feels <i>very</i> achievable!

Most people quitting twitter would be a great boon for society. So many people angrily yelling nothing of import into the ether.

Why don&#x27;t we just remove gamification from it and be done with this? I wonder why anonymous forums (imageboards, etc.) aren&#x27;t even mentioned, ever.

&gt; Social media are the fidget spinners of the soul.<p>Substack is quickly becoming Writing 101 for tech bros.

Author quotes this:<p>&gt; &quot;I love Twitter. Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness.&quot; -- Jack Dorsey, Apr 25, 2022<p>Twitter is more like hooking electrodes to a the brains of a frog and watching parts of it jump when you apply current.<p>The people worrying about Musk: (a) believe that twitter offers such zombie like control over &quot;global consciousness&quot;, (b) that such controls are a <i>good thing</i>, and (c) that Musk is the Wrong Person to wield them, which means there must be Right People somewhere.<p>I think they&#x27;re wrong on all counts.

Twitter is only relevant to the people who use it. I personally don&#x27;t know anyone who uses it in 2022.

That wasn&#x27;t actually brief. Also, anything titled like &quot;On ____&quot; comes across as pretentious to me.