One of the most important tools for trust and safety efforts is the “block” feature, allowing a user to entirely block someone else from following them. Yes, on Twitter you can get around this by g…
People really really really need to leave Twitter already.
Time to further pester my friends who “can’t leave” because they, in essence, can’t be assed to try anything else
It’s like this whole nasty ass self-perpetuating cycle with social media, people will complain about not liking Twitter/etc, you show them tons of alternatives, and then they back up and go “no, no. I like Twitter just fine” or will refuse to even attempt anything else because it’s not 1:1 the perfect image of their ideal service they pictured in their mind. So things get worse because they don’t leave, but their refusal to try, to even merely attempt using something else alongside Twitter and reminding their followers that they’re there too, it entrenches them further
I think I remember Elon saying he wanted to turn Twitter into “the everything website”, but frankly that’s just putting words to what Twitter already has been for years now. It’s been pushed to be the “everything website” for so long now that people convinced themselves and thus others that there’s little use to using something else. I remember on multiple occasions being told directly that if I want to post my art online but don’t want to use Twitter, that I should just not even bother because nobody uses anything else, at least not for the initial content discovery, which genuinely discouraged me initially and I think that cloud is still hanging over my head somewhat.
In general I hate how the dynamics of social media crises like this always go, or be it any other platform where there are strong personal connections. People are like “Yes! Let’s go!” and then some of them freeze up and wait for what others do, people who went first eventually come back because nobody followed them to the new place.
I guess the issue with Twitter is people have no option to organize and make decisions as a whole, except for relying on the algorithm designed to promote rage and novelty promoting a consensus for a day or two before it goes away.
I guess we’ll see how the reddit thing goes and if it’s any different, we’ll have two data points to compare.
The Reddit thing thus far seems many times more fervent than anything that happened to Twitter (I’ve been on and off fedi since 2017 and saw tons of migration waves from Twitter and other corpo sites), so hopefully it’ll be different? Definitely seems to at least in part be because of the stark cultural difference between Twitter and Reddit at least in terms of how people directly interact with the service itself, like the whole thing with it being common to delete your old Reddit acc and start again every so often, or having multiple Reddit accounts to segment things off also being more common than on Twitter (I think I have/had like 4 Reddit accounts I hop onto every so often, personally?), but on Twitter your account is treated as more of a “permanent” and unmoving thing instead.
I guess the latest twitter wave is sort of relevant to me since a decent number of furries moved over, though I still feel like some more popular members of the community failed us there, because I haven’t seen any of them trying to use their influence to do anything, and I feel like they should put in at least some effort to research that.
I also haven’t seen anyone really promote their fedi accounts on other places even if they got one, but every YouTube video out there has a mention of twitter and other mainstream sites.
You’re right about the culture, redditors have more agency, and it feels like twitter has turned people into zombies who don’t think anything except what their timeline (if you can really still call it a timeline) feeds them, the moment it disappears from there it’s as if it doesn’t exist.
Really makes me wonder what platforms like tiktok where the user agency is maximally removed must be doing to people’s brains, I’ve never used it so I can’t tell exactly, but the 100% passive attitude of my younger siblings to it, social media and what happens within it gives me a hint.
Time to further pester my friends who “can’t leave” because they, in essence, can’t be assed to try anything else
It’s like this whole nasty ass self-perpetuating cycle with social media, people will complain about not liking Twitter/etc, you show them tons of alternatives, and then they back up and go “no, no. I like Twitter just fine” or will refuse to even attempt anything else because it’s not 1:1 the perfect image of their ideal service they pictured in their mind. So things get worse because they don’t leave, but their refusal to try, to even merely attempt using something else alongside Twitter and reminding their followers that they’re there too, it entrenches them further
I think I remember Elon saying he wanted to turn Twitter into “the everything website”, but frankly that’s just putting words to what Twitter already has been for years now. It’s been pushed to be the “everything website” for so long now that people convinced themselves and thus others that there’s little use to using something else. I remember on multiple occasions being told directly that if I want to post my art online but don’t want to use Twitter, that I should just not even bother because nobody uses anything else, at least not for the initial content discovery, which genuinely discouraged me initially and I think that cloud is still hanging over my head somewhat.
In general I hate how the dynamics of social media crises like this always go, or be it any other platform where there are strong personal connections. People are like “Yes! Let’s go!” and then some of them freeze up and wait for what others do, people who went first eventually come back because nobody followed them to the new place.
I guess the issue with Twitter is people have no option to organize and make decisions as a whole, except for relying on the algorithm designed to promote rage and novelty promoting a consensus for a day or two before it goes away.
I guess we’ll see how the reddit thing goes and if it’s any different, we’ll have two data points to compare.
The Reddit thing thus far seems many times more fervent than anything that happened to Twitter (I’ve been on and off fedi since 2017 and saw tons of migration waves from Twitter and other corpo sites), so hopefully it’ll be different? Definitely seems to at least in part be because of the stark cultural difference between Twitter and Reddit at least in terms of how people directly interact with the service itself, like the whole thing with it being common to delete your old Reddit acc and start again every so often, or having multiple Reddit accounts to segment things off also being more common than on Twitter (I think I have/had like 4 Reddit accounts I hop onto every so often, personally?), but on Twitter your account is treated as more of a “permanent” and unmoving thing instead.
I guess the latest twitter wave is sort of relevant to me since a decent number of furries moved over, though I still feel like some more popular members of the community failed us there, because I haven’t seen any of them trying to use their influence to do anything, and I feel like they should put in at least some effort to research that.
I also haven’t seen anyone really promote their fedi accounts on other places even if they got one, but every YouTube video out there has a mention of twitter and other mainstream sites.
You’re right about the culture, redditors have more agency, and it feels like twitter has turned people into zombies who don’t think anything except what their timeline (if you can really still call it a timeline) feeds them, the moment it disappears from there it’s as if it doesn’t exist.
Really makes me wonder what platforms like tiktok where the user agency is maximally removed must be doing to people’s brains, I’ve never used it so I can’t tell exactly, but the 100% passive attitude of my younger siblings to it, social media and what happens within it gives me a hint.