Turns out forcing people to use Twitter less makes people use Twitter less, what a discovery!
If you’re still on Twitter, you’re part of the problem. I don’t care about your excuses.
Good! Hope to see the same stories about Reddit and other major social media platforms that have taken steps to prioritize profit over the community.
The users are your golden apple. Abuse them, the apple turns sour.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’m barely using reddit/twitter and now I spend most of my online time on Lemmy/Mastodon.
That’s fine. The user base doesn’t need to be in the nine or ten figures to have a community that has decent activity. Even with the thousands activity has been impressive, and that’s with all this fragmentation across instances too.
Yeah, I’m feeling this is more on Meta having excelent timing with Threads unfortunately
I thought the proverb was: cook a golden goose and you’ll eat for a day. Teach the golden goose to lay eggs and you’ll eat for a lifetime.
Gold is edible btw. Or at least inedible and non-toxic. It passes through without chemically reacting.
Give a man a fire, you’ll keep him warm for a night. Light a man on fire, you’ll keep him warm for the rest of his life.
The fact that people who have paid get to have their replies appear first means that you see the people with the worst opinions (people who are fine with giving Musk money) most of the time, just makes it a very un-fun experience.
Social media company’s don’t understand what makes a Social network great. It isn’t advertising, or social manipulation, or exorbitant subscription fees and API charges. It isn’t restriction of speech or freedom of speech, it isn’t algorithmically controlled moderation and curation.
It is the people that make a social network great.
It is the people that make a social network great.
You’re right. I say this every time these conversations come up. It’s the people that hold the power. Imagine how quickly things would change if everyone stopped using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, WhatsApp, Telegram, Snapchat, etc. overnight. From billions/millions to users, to zero. Can you imagine how quickly the companies would change/adjust/pivot/react?
Social media company’s don’t understand what makes a Social network great.
Disagree. They know. It’s just that they’re trapped in an unethical business model that will never allow them to make it great. This is because the platform’s interests are constantly at war with the user’s interests. This was a critical mistake in the earlier days of the internet.
Google itself identified this in the early days in a paper that they wrote. They originally just wanted to organize the internet. But with an advertising revenue model, the interests of the advertisers was ultimately gonna be more important.
Call it “enshittification”: Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
They don’t care about making a great or even good product. It’s solely about making as much money in as short a time period as possible, regardless of the long term consequences.
I don’t have access to Twitter’s balance sheet, but I’d wager a guess that they’re on financial life support in the short term, and they’ve got a stage 4 cancer diagnosis in the long term.
The only thing Twitter has going for them over a competitor like Mastodon or Threads, is their name. And Musk has made sure their name is covered in shit and mud.
Twitter was doomed before Musk bought them, and they’re super doomed now.
While it is true, there are also some factors which make people converge on some platforms. Factors beyond simply presence of other people. Like technical features.
The biggest technical feature that draws users is the Interface. Twitter didn’t gain popularity (or even the Bird icon and “tweet” moniker) until Tweetie, Twitteriffic and eventually Tweetbot came along.
Reddit was just a website for (no offence intended) “neckbearded basement dwelling incels” until RiF and Apollo made it more accessible.
Mastodon usage soared when 3rd Party Twitter apps were killed and once once again when Ivory was released.
I didn’t even know about Lemmy until I heard @christianselig@mastodon.social and @gruber@mastodon.social mentioned it on The Talk Show. I didn’t start using it regularly until I discovered wefwef and Memmy.
You’re not wrong about there being multiple factors, but I’d argue that this is often the least important factor. The technical features are easily replicated. (See: threads, stories, reels/tiktoks/shorts, etc.)
Network effects, on the other hand, have a stranglehold like no other.
You’re on Facebook because your family’s on there. You’re on Twitter because your favorite meme pages are on there. You’re on Instagram because the photographer you really like is on there. So on and so forth.
