Why twitter?
I e had this question on my mind for a long time: what is the draw of Twitter?
As far as I can tell, it is the place that most inflames dog piling cancel culture, and various other forms of mass incitement. I believe that Sam’s view of the world has been skewed by his use of the platform. It just seems like a useless tool to me. Obviously I’m not a user, but I don’t see why some people who recognize its faults still feel compelled to use it.
This came to mind while listening to this podcast:
an interview with a person that has made “block party” a tool that does things like auto-mutes people and otherwise helps manage individual users’ feeds. I couldn’t help but think “if you need this, maybe the solution is to stop using this platform”.
Other thoughts are:
Part of the solution is more competition, though with the way things are there does seem to be a winner take (almost) all dynamic in this market.
The opening of APIs was an important enabler of this software. Harkens back to old school free[libre] software ideas, where people should be able to examine and modify software they use. Maybe imposing a requirement for open apis could be a cost of maintaining their monopoly status…
IMO - twitter is mostly a garbage dump. There are a few makers and some local figures I follow, but the ‘comments and replies’ on many threads are just awash with stupidity and politicized extremism.
I would never post an opinion on twitter, because I wouldn’t want to see many of the replies.
Also there is very little follow-up, so a person can yell a fallacious or misinformed opinion into the void and walk away, never to see any responses to their yelling, and never to need to back it up with further information.