> Now, in fairness to X and Elon and its hard-working employees, the Adolf Hitler fandom does seem to have greatly wound down in the one and a half years since then. I suspect part of this is because such movements inevitably burn out once people realize how immoral and stupid they are. But another part is undoubtedly genuine improvements in how The Algorithm™ works.
> Click on the tweet and look around its quotes and responses, the same way that someone would morbidly stare at a car accident.
Twitter gets money from ads. They can sell more ads for more money when they can demonstrate eyeballs and eyeball time. Therefore, they're incentivized to keep your eyeballs on the app for as long as possible. If that means putting car accidents in front of you, that's what it'll do!
I strongly believe that social media is basically a lost cause for this and a few other reasons. I tried out Mastodon and Bluesky, but people there don't seem to actually be interested in conversation, and there's physical limitations that prevent meaningful conversation anyway in the form of character limits. ~200 characters is simply not enough space for anything meaningful to be conveyed, so the platform selects for snippy clapbacks and pithy virtue signalling.
I'm also unconvinced there's anything of value to be had from these platforms, maybe including HN. I seem to be hearing about the new hotness in the AI space for example by just regularly attending coworking events. I guess if everyone stopped using Twitter, that would stop being the case. Or maybe we'd go back to RSS...
> Click on the tweet and look around its quotes and responses, the same way that someone would morbidly stare at a car accident.
Twitter gets money from ads. They can sell more ads for more money when they can demonstrate eyeballs and eyeball time. Therefore, they're incentivized to keep your eyeballs on the app for as long as possible. If that means putting car accidents in front of you, that's what it'll do!
I strongly believe that social media is basically a lost cause for this and a few other reasons. I tried out Mastodon and Bluesky, but people there don't seem to actually be interested in conversation, and there's physical limitations that prevent meaningful conversation anyway in the form of character limits. ~200 characters is simply not enough space for anything meaningful to be conveyed, so the platform selects for snippy clapbacks and pithy virtue signalling.
I'm also unconvinced there's anything of value to be had from these platforms, maybe including HN. I seem to be hearing about the new hotness in the AI space for example by just regularly attending coworking events. I guess if everyone stopped using Twitter, that would stop being the case. Or maybe we'd go back to RSS...