The day may be coming
By A lot of the fun went out of Twitter when Howard Hughes bought it, and the damage to the site seems to be accelerating this week.
The value of Twitter, as has been said many times, is the number and nature of posters. There are a great many experts in many areas, along with institutional posters, like governments and media, are there. It has, by far, more information on Russia’s Ukraine war, from individuals in the area, than any other website. It’s been very good for information on the pandemic.
I stay because the action is there. I am building a smaller presence on Mastodon, because that looks like the least bad place to land. Post has some value as a media aggregator, but media alone are not worth my time. The denizens of that site continue to urge everyone to move there from Twitter, but until everyone moves, it’s not going to be like Twitter. Additionally, it is more difficult to use. Following someone can require a dozen clicks. The site constantly reminds you that it is run by a quirky person who doesn’t like quote tweets.
But lately that billionaire has declared NPR a government-run news organ, replaced the blue bird logo with a doge because of his legal fight over dogecoin, and today made it impossible to retweet tweets with Substack links. NPR stopped posting, and now Substack posters, not all of which are Substack Bros, are thinking of leaving.
None of those things is a killer for me, but it’s annoying to watch those urine bottles piling up. Far too much of the conversation is about the billionaire who owns the site, displacing the useful content. There’s no real replacement, and Twitter provides a lot of the information we post here. The real-time coverage of Tennessee’s legislature yesterday was important.
I won’t leave yet, but the feeling grows that my days there are numbered.