I don't see Twitter going down anytime soon. It has noticeably become much better (though there were some issues initially) feature wise (especially with Twitter Blue). Disappointed with API pricing as it completely destroyed the Indie Hacker community. Maybe this is bound to happen with most services sooner or later as everyone is realizing that data is becoming more important than ever (Reddit/Stack Overflow is now charging for API access too). Won't be surprised if Elon uses Twitter data as base dataset for his new AI venture while restricting others from accessing it for building their own models.
How has it become better? AFAIK the number of genuine interactions on site has significantly decreased with platform exodus. The model of being recommended things that people for a checkmark to hope to show you is also definitely orthogonal to how social network interactions foster.
> How has it become better? AFAIK the number of genuine interactions on site has significantly decreased with platform exodus
Then that only means you were surrounded by your own small bubble. I had taken a hiatus from Twitter because I despised how the "algorithm" banned accounts that I was following earlier only because it was from the right of political spectrum in my Country (India). One of those accounts was an account that set right historical facts about Indian history which was distorted by leftist historians after India gained Independence. These new facts were cross verified and revealed to be true. So what did Twitter India decide to do? It banned the said account.
It was only after Elon took over, all those accounts were re-activated. So I have an opposite experience to you. Most of the accounts that I followed were banned by erstwhile regime have been now reinstated. So it is an opposite of an exodus for me.
Quite frankly, this is not just me in India who felt this. I am pretty sure it was widespread as Twitter was extremely left leaning in its ideology (from employees to the CEO). There was actual stifling of alternative viewpoints - though many on that side of the political spectrum will refuse to even acknowledge this.
Anyways I only brought this up to counter your point on there being some "platform exodus". There is only disgruntled developers who don't like Elon (especially after he openly said he would prefer voting Republican) and his centre-right leaning ideology and left the site. There is no "rational" reason for the hate.
Sorry to put it bluntly. I have always tried to be restricted in what I say lest I get "cancelled" by the woke mob (have been banned twice on HN itself for having contrary opinions). But at this point, I don't care anymore if people feel hurt by my ideological/political/social stances. I am tired of being censored every step of the way. By both Big Tech and Government. I respect your ideological point of view and I hope to get the same treatment back in return. At one point I identified with liberal causes, of being "for free speech" and not against it. Sadly, I find myself moving farther and farther away from what has now become of liberal ideology. It is no longer liberal in that old sense. It has turned fascist. And I can't stand that any more. I find myself on the right side of the aisle which ironically is "for free speech" while the liberal left, which was supposed to stand "for free speech" has adopted cancel culture and censorship as tools to counter opposing viewpoints. People who refuse to see this or accept this are just living in delusion.
This is hilarious. For one, I don't even have a twitter so I have no "bubble", as I stated this is the default top recommendations for anonymous users, which is super important for converting people onto the platform.
The decrease in activity on twitter is also not a personal anecdote, the number of companies advertising and using platform has decreased substantially.
And lastly, this is exactly my point, you're concerned about some woke mob cry baby crap when the average user doesn't care about either side, this is the kind of dumb shit I see all over twitter when I'm literally scrolling past a highlight for a sports reel highlight and as I said the recommended tweets are random paid low follower people using hysterics to try to get attention. The reality is people don't care what you have to say, and doubly so if you get wound up about a random website not making you feel better about shouting into the void.
Okay so let me address your points starting from your last statement:
> The reality is people don't care what you have to say, and doubly so if you get wound up about a random website not making you feel better about shouting into the void.
So why the censorship/bans then? Censorship does nothing but aggravate the situation even more. Isn't it better to just let people "shout into the void" than stifle their expression and cause harm in real world?
> when the average user doesn't care about either side, this is the kind of dumb shit I see all over twitter when I'm literally scrolling past a highlight for a sports reel highlight and as I said the recommended tweets are random paid low follower people using hysterics to try to get attention.
You say you don't care about it, and yet you are commenting on it. So you do actually care about what is happening on Twitter. If you consider yourself an average user you wouldn't be concerned about Twitter rising in popularity or drowning in loss. You would see your sports reel highlight and close it while being unconcerned about everything else.
> The decrease in activity on twitter is also not a personal anecdote, the number of companies advertising and using platform has decreased substantially.
What you are saying here is again talking points of MSM. Which is another bubble of its own. Neither you nor I have any access to actual data on how many companies are advertising and if the number has gone up or gone down apart from the few knee jerk reactions in the beginning of the takeover. The only real source of information for this would be Musk himself. And he says things are back to normal so I'll take him at his word [1]. Everything else is just conjectures and speculations as Twitter is no longer a public company.
> This is hilarious. For one, I don't even have a twitter so I have no "bubble"
I assumed you are a user because you seemed to talk about Twitter from the point of view of an actual user.
> I stated this is the default top recommendations for anonymous users, which is super important for converting people onto the platform.
Twitter is too big at this point to worry about "converting people onto the platform". It is not like people are discovering Twitter for the first time in 2023. That number (of new users) is going to be very less - possibly those kids who are coming of age and who Twitter is not a target audience for anyways. So Twitter has probably already saturated the market it can tap into and all those who are still joining are just based on whatever is the regular trajectory of Twitter growth. You can't expect any sort of exponential growth in Twitter usage after it has already been in business for over a decade now. It is not an early stage startup where you talk about conversions for anonymous users. Now any conversion metrics that we should focus on would be advertising revenues (not the number of advertisers as that is meaningless), API revenues (which was recently announced with a huge price bump), number of people subscribing to Twitter Blue, number of people subscribing to Creators, MSM/News media subscriptions, paid tweets and lets not forget deals with Governments. This is where the real numbers are going to come from. And unless Twitter releases these numbers we will never know (as Twitter is now a private company).
"April 12 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday the social media company is "roughly breaking even," as most of its advertisers have returned and its aggressive cost-cutting efforts have started bearing fruit after massive layoffs."
It's private and sure the owner is rich, but it's still a burn and nowhere near recuperating the cost. A bunch of advertisers left or paused spending as noted.
A little lesson on business, Musk bought it for 44 billion, at time it was not quite a profitable company but had 4.4 billion in revenue, if he slashes the operating budget by a huge margin and laying off everyone, then whoopee it's profitable, but it's nowhere near the amount of revenue/profit it needs to pay back the debt taken on to finance the purchase. private market analysts report on ad spending all project twitter revenues to drop substantially (40%) based on ad spend data.
Right now Twitter may not be recuperating the sale I agree, but as long as it is able to pay the interest on debt plus whatever is the equated instalments it should be good (for the time being at least). But one thing we haven't accounted for is Musk using Twitter's dataset for training LLMs in his new AI venture. Now that is a gold mine on its own. There is significant raw potential that is still untapped.
Eventually everyone will move out of the ad business as ad blockers become more prolific and it no longer is worth the cost to advertise. So there will be alternative ways of earning. Can never rule that out.
Noticeably better in terms of content I am seeing and that the accounts I used to follow earlier, which were banned in the erstwhile Twitter regime, have been reinstated. Plus Twitter is more fun and engaging now than it was before where I used to only see people cancelling/boycotting/fighting over trivial things. Community notes is working great too. I know instantly if something is fake or not and prevents me from sharing that Tweet with friends/family (if not for community notes I would have believed the Tweet to be true, unless I actually did my own research/investigation).
Downsides I listed are more frustration with some decisions taken by Elon. Like increasing the price of the API. But I can see why he did that (especially considering news that OpenAI trained on Twitter data too). I just vented it out so if any Twitter employee is reading this, they come up with some way to also help indie developers (many of them shut shop after this debacle).
Also, I really despise it when people want you to choose either black or white. Either you are in the club of hating Elon or glorifying him. I don't want to fall in either of the buckets. I want to express my own opinion on things that are not influenced by the mob. So yeah I can say both good and bad things about Twitter takeover. And that's exactly what I am doing.
Honestly the only thing that I think has genuinely improved is Community Notes. I think it's pretty smart that a note is only added when people who usually disagree with each other agree on a note. I don't know if that was something in the works prior to Musk or not, but it seems like the rare good idea for improving social media discourse. By comparison, Twitter Blue seems like a gimmick at best.
Oh come on. Twitter going down was a big meme in pre-Musk takeover (remember the "Twitter is over capacity" blue whale of death? I do). Compared to earlier disruptions this is nothing (the entire site is still accessible for me). Could just be a feature upgrade or some form of maintenance which is causing accounts to be logged out. It is not like the "Twitter is over capacity" days where you just couldn't access Twitter at all (even when logged out).
