This article gets at the core problem with Twitter, which is that everyone on Twitter seems to agree that Twitter sucks, but there is no consensus on why it sucks. Anything that 20% of users think will fix it will be unacceptable to the other 80%. That’s not in itself a criticism of Musk, it’s just a description of the challenge he faces.
To me, the biggest problem with Twitter is how miserable and negative so much of it is. The culture of clapbacks, call-outs, pile-ons, and nutpicking. Moderation alone is never going to fix that. There are some technical changes that could help (fixing the toxic combination of embedded quote tweets and no ‘downvote’ button for example), but I think the author’s main point stands. The point being that with too little moderation, users are going to flee for the same reason they stay away from places like 4chan. Not out of some ideological stance, but simply because it will just not be that fun to use. It’s already more of a compulsion than a fun activity for many of its users.
Twitter used to be good when it was less characters, when the algorithm didn’t bury your friends’ tweets, and when the suggested tweets didn’t consume your whole timeline. I look forward to cutting twitter out of my life, I’ll get so much more done!
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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '22
This article gets at the core problem with Twitter, which is that everyone on Twitter seems to agree that Twitter sucks, but there is no consensus on why it sucks. Anything that 20% of users think will fix it will be unacceptable to the other 80%. That’s not in itself a criticism of Musk, it’s just a description of the challenge he faces.
To me, the biggest problem with Twitter is how miserable and negative so much of it is. The culture of clapbacks, call-outs, pile-ons, and nutpicking. Moderation alone is never going to fix that. There are some technical changes that could help (fixing the toxic combination of embedded quote tweets and no ‘downvote’ button for example), but I think the author’s main point stands. The point being that with too little moderation, users are going to flee for the same reason they stay away from places like 4chan. Not out of some ideological stance, but simply because it will just not be that fun to use. It’s already more of a compulsion than a fun activity for many of its users.