Stopped only now? I cleared my tweets the day it fell into Handsome Musk's claws and left a note explaining not wanting to support that dubious guy with a link to my Mastodon account.
Never looked back.
I've never liked Twitter, and I wish everyone using it would post their content on a free software platform that wasn't managed by one private company. I felt exactly the same way in the 2010s and early 2020s - the period of time this person describes as "amazing" - when the Twitter platform was owned and managed by a different group of people with object-level poltical opinions he liked better.
Nonetheless, insofar as people who post content I want to read on Twitter, or the ActivityPub ecosystem, or the AT protocol ecosystem, I'll do my best to read it where it's posted. The ActivityPub ecosystem has serious flaws and so does AT proto, but they're at least free software projects that people can hack on to try to make them better (although of course in any kind of distributed system, the hard part isn't making your changes it's getting a critical mass of other nodes to agree to them)
I follow a lot of japanese accounts on Twitter. Idols, vtubers, actors, sport teams, sumo news, pro mahjong scene, artists, mangaka, streamers, goverment agencies etc. They don't use anything else but Twitter, maybe Facebook. I can move away but what I _want to_ follow is still there.
Maybe we need regional microblogging services so people would be incentivized to use them, maybe China was right all along
Those are four solid reasons to leave Twitter. There's many more reasons.
I quit my Twitter account pretty much around the time Musk took it over (he became a more of a looney around the time he had contact with Putin in end of 2022), haven't looked back. I added the ASNs to my firewall, this was before they went with Cloudflare. There are some proxies which allow you to quote from there, but a lot of people are now dual stack (e.g. Twitter + BlueSky or Twitter + Mastodon). So for example following the latest concerning Ukraine is still very much possible without Twitter.
From what I heard, it is pretty much 4chan level nowadays.
I hate these socials. While some posts here and there are interesting, I'll still have to read people's thoughts on politics, what they ate for lunch or how was their vacation in Vietnam. I wish you could only read the authors you follow on the topics you care, but the algorithms don't work like that, and they post about anything.
On the other hand, more in-topic focused boards like HN and Reddit, value short-term visibility over depth. Sure, at least you're only discussing one topic at a time, but how much insights or reflections can you have when discussions die in 24 hours?
Say what you want, but good old vBulletin-like forums are peak internet discussions.
Like how in the world can you compete for insightful-deep topic discussions with something like a plain old forum?
Where in the world can you find so much information, e.g. about the Mercedes W211 E class?
I with there were places to discuss, e.g., a specific technology (sometimes github issues are a surrogate), or software design philosophy in general (the mail group of Jon Ousterhout is again, just a surrogate).
But these places just don't exist.
Even more at work, companies would benefit from having long term discussions and threads about product, technologies, etc. Instead we spreading (and forgetting) the same information over and over with teams, slack, jira, issues, conflunce, sync-calls. ugh
The original saying was "Twitter is free because you pay with your mental health".
Also stopped using Twitter/X. Immediate mental health++. I was afraid I was losing access to the "pulse" of ML/AI, but the opposite actually happened when I replaced a Twitter feed of shallow AI takes with Huggingface's Daily Papers email list [1].
If enough people get on Bluesky, then someone will figure out the ways to get maximum effect for minimum effort at some point. It will become a cesspool of stupid opinions and then it will be colonized by low-thinking idiots and then used for political purposes.
This is because all broadcast media eventually converges on the same thing in the end: a place to dump out ugly things as society eventually becomes resistant to them.
Edit: this was an intelligent comment and there was no reason to downvote it without explaining why.
Downvotes are a tone. It’s the equivalent of yelling “shut up” and “stupid” at things that might require a little thought. That’s what makes the communities worse, not the odd comments that get dragged under by reflexive negativity.
So far in this thread the majority of Hacker News users have decided they don't like the tone of your comment, therefore they have downvoted your comment.
If you don't see the irony, let me point it out: this is a real time demonstration that your following statement is not an inevitable thing:
> eventually converges on the same thing in the end: a place to dump out ugly things
When a community has the tools for self governance, then it can resist influences that it does not appreciate. In the case of Bluesky in specific, you may not be familiar with how easy it is to subscribe to labelers and blocklists. This decentralized self governance model allows anyone to curate their Bluesky experience, and it allows sub communities to collectively govern in ways that filter the cesspool and remove the ugly things.
In short, the fact that you are complaining about downvotes while simultaneously saying that it is inevitable for communities to devolve into places to dump ugly things is highly ironic. One thing that you are complaining about, is the solution to the other thing that you are complaining about.
You’ve collapsed my comment into a crumpled up pile of ideas that you hate. Your description doesn’t resonate with me and describe what I had to say. And I notice the article itself is now flagged and dead, because of downvotes too.
You're being downvoted because you haven't contributed anything to the conversation. You're just complaining.
This was not an intelligent comment. You haven't even identified any real problem or conditions. You've made up a hypothetical to get mad about and called yourself intelligent for whining about your irrelevant complaint in the comments.
An intelligent comment would have some sources, even anecdotal. It would identify a problem and suggest how it might be solved. You've assumed that a problem exists, can never be solved, therefore the whole situation is stupid along with all the people involved.
Not one single word of your comment had any kind of positive or charitable intent. Just pissing and moaning over a problem you imagined.
Not reading the sources that extreme ideologues read is to lack critical information and perspective important to understanding those who you dissagree with or even find reprehensible.
I think the bar analogy lacks some important nuance. Not participating on the platform is one thing but drawing a distinction between being informed and support for
the platform needs a little more thought here.
Stopped only now? I cleared my tweets the day it fell into Handsome Musk's claws and left a note explaining not wanting to support that dubious guy with a link to my Mastodon account. Never looked back.
Likewise except for the mastodon account. I simply stopped using that kind of medium.
I've never liked Twitter, and I wish everyone using it would post their content on a free software platform that wasn't managed by one private company. I felt exactly the same way in the 2010s and early 2020s - the period of time this person describes as "amazing" - when the Twitter platform was owned and managed by a different group of people with object-level poltical opinions he liked better.
Nonetheless, insofar as people who post content I want to read on Twitter, or the ActivityPub ecosystem, or the AT protocol ecosystem, I'll do my best to read it where it's posted. The ActivityPub ecosystem has serious flaws and so does AT proto, but they're at least free software projects that people can hack on to try to make them better (although of course in any kind of distributed system, the hard part isn't making your changes it's getting a critical mass of other nodes to agree to them)
I follow a lot of japanese accounts on Twitter. Idols, vtubers, actors, sport teams, sumo news, pro mahjong scene, artists, mangaka, streamers, goverment agencies etc. They don't use anything else but Twitter, maybe Facebook. I can move away but what I _want to_ follow is still there.
Maybe we need regional microblogging services so people would be incentivized to use them, maybe China was right all along
Why is this flagged?
Because there are basically no checks in flagging, and awful bad suppressing ne'er do-wellers detest the good & people hearing of good.
I get so much out of Mastodon these days, it's great. Just added @korny to my list.
Those are four solid reasons to leave Twitter. There's many more reasons.
I quit my Twitter account pretty much around the time Musk took it over (he became a more of a looney around the time he had contact with Putin in end of 2022), haven't looked back. I added the ASNs to my firewall, this was before they went with Cloudflare. There are some proxies which allow you to quote from there, but a lot of people are now dual stack (e.g. Twitter + BlueSky or Twitter + Mastodon). So for example following the latest concerning Ukraine is still very much possible without Twitter.
From what I heard, it is pretty much 4chan level nowadays.
I still use RSS and Mastodon.
OT but I'll include my usual rant.
I hate these socials. While some posts here and there are interesting, I'll still have to read people's thoughts on politics, what they ate for lunch or how was their vacation in Vietnam. I wish you could only read the authors you follow on the topics you care, but the algorithms don't work like that, and they post about anything.
On the other hand, more in-topic focused boards like HN and Reddit, value short-term visibility over depth. Sure, at least you're only discussing one topic at a time, but how much insights or reflections can you have when discussions die in 24 hours?
Say what you want, but good old vBulletin-like forums are peak internet discussions.
Like how in the world can you compete for insightful-deep topic discussions with something like a plain old forum?
Where in the world can you find so much information, e.g. about the Mercedes W211 E class?
https://mbworld.org/forums/e-class-w211-20/
I with there were places to discuss, e.g., a specific technology (sometimes github issues are a surrogate), or software design philosophy in general (the mail group of Jon Ousterhout is again, just a surrogate).
But these places just don't exist.
Even more at work, companies would benefit from having long term discussions and threads about product, technologies, etc. Instead we spreading (and forgetting) the same information over and over with teams, slack, jira, issues, conflunce, sync-calls. ugh
I've stopped using Twitter too. I don't even browse it.
I left a year ago and pulled down all my content.
It was definitely a good move.
The original saying was "Twitter is free because you pay with your mental health".
Also stopped using Twitter/X. Immediate mental health++. I was afraid I was losing access to the "pulse" of ML/AI, but the opposite actually happened when I replaced a Twitter feed of shallow AI takes with Huggingface's Daily Papers email list [1].
More papers read, less shallow takes
[1] - https://huggingface.co/papers
This is the way. You can't claim you were ignoring the Nazis in the bar while sipping a Aperol Spritz -- you were supporting a Nazi bar.
Its just an overpriced website for elon musk that happens to allow you to post your own content, not that anyone is going to see it.
I think the "Nazi bar" metaphor is good life advice.
[dead]
When "Refusing to use Mastodon"?
If enough people get on Bluesky, then someone will figure out the ways to get maximum effect for minimum effort at some point. It will become a cesspool of stupid opinions and then it will be colonized by low-thinking idiots and then used for political purposes.
This is because all broadcast media eventually converges on the same thing in the end: a place to dump out ugly things as society eventually becomes resistant to them.
Edit: this was an intelligent comment and there was no reason to downvote it without explaining why.
Better to stay on the already-degenerated platform than to keep moving, then?
It's not like this cycle happens every year. There's no reason to put this defeatism out there.
What defeatism? What enemy?
You are getting downvoted for tone. By tone I mean the polarizing terms like: "cesspool of stupid opinions" and "low-thinking idiots", etc.
When social communities allow the type of tone you are using, that is precisely how they end up worse over time.
Hacker News downvoting comments like yours is how it has maintained quite high quality over the last 16 years I've been on this website.
Downvotes are a tone. It’s the equivalent of yelling “shut up” and “stupid” at things that might require a little thought. That’s what makes the communities worse, not the odd comments that get dragged under by reflexive negativity.
So far in this thread the majority of Hacker News users have decided they don't like the tone of your comment, therefore they have downvoted your comment.
If you don't see the irony, let me point it out: this is a real time demonstration that your following statement is not an inevitable thing:
> eventually converges on the same thing in the end: a place to dump out ugly things
When a community has the tools for self governance, then it can resist influences that it does not appreciate. In the case of Bluesky in specific, you may not be familiar with how easy it is to subscribe to labelers and blocklists. This decentralized self governance model allows anyone to curate their Bluesky experience, and it allows sub communities to collectively govern in ways that filter the cesspool and remove the ugly things.
In short, the fact that you are complaining about downvotes while simultaneously saying that it is inevitable for communities to devolve into places to dump ugly things is highly ironic. One thing that you are complaining about, is the solution to the other thing that you are complaining about.
You’ve collapsed my comment into a crumpled up pile of ideas that you hate. Your description doesn’t resonate with me and describe what I had to say. And I notice the article itself is now flagged and dead, because of downvotes too.
You're being downvoted because you haven't contributed anything to the conversation. You're just complaining.
This was not an intelligent comment. You haven't even identified any real problem or conditions. You've made up a hypothetical to get mad about and called yourself intelligent for whining about your irrelevant complaint in the comments.
An intelligent comment would have some sources, even anecdotal. It would identify a problem and suggest how it might be solved. You've assumed that a problem exists, can never be solved, therefore the whole situation is stupid along with all the people involved.
Not one single word of your comment had any kind of positive or charitable intent. Just pissing and moaning over a problem you imagined.
Are you sure?
Not reading the sources that extreme ideologues read is to lack critical information and perspective important to understanding those who you dissagree with or even find reprehensible.
I think the bar analogy lacks some important nuance. Not participating on the platform is one thing but drawing a distinction between being informed and support for the platform needs a little more thought here.