Twitter is basically Truth Social now

[noblegiraffe]

My 'Following' tab is dead because everyone interesting has left.

My 'For you' tab is full of Elon Musk's prolific blithering and other right wing shit, and AI bots commenting on posts generated by AI bots.

Given Musk's exceptionally prominent role in Trump's new government, is it appropriate for UK politicians to be posting on there? I don't think they'd use Truth Social.

Such a shame, it used to be great.

See attached

They could just use the block function 🤔

No twitter user count but you might like this more detailed one with info on the share of users overall & that new joiners that are British, American & elsewhere

https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats

I had a look at bluesky but quickly deleted it.

No desire to go back to the stone age of twitter, where women were hounded for believing I'm biological reality.

I'll take my chances with the righties on twitter. At least they let me argue with them 🤣

I guess it depends on who you follow. I'm pretty impressed so far.

Me too but then I don't mind being in a bubble on SM.

As someone said earlier, it's like twitter before it became x.

Not perfect but better than scrolling past blue ticks.

This is the functionality. I can see posts that people who I’m following like so I can scroll through some stuff I might not have seen, the replies aren’t filtered by people who’ve paid for it and I haven’t yet spotted all the bots & porn bots. I’m sure they will turn up but they aren’t there yet.

All it needs is a decent bookmarking system.

Interesting conversation about Blue Sky in one of my groups.

"People’s accounts are being tagged for transphobia and posts are being tagged for ‘intolerance’. I wouldn’t waste your time. It’s owned by a TRA called Jay Graber and seems that all the TQIA+ mods that Elon sacked are there doing their usual sterling work. "
Examples were given by several members of the group of women being silenced on Blue Sky.

Sounds like Twitter before Musk bought it when women were punished for calling men who pretend to be women, men.

I won't bother.

Or you could check it out for yourself. I haven't encountered this problem yet.

That's interesting. Have you tried posting anything very GC or telling men pretending to be women that they are men?
That's the sort of thing that used to get women banned from Twitter.

If you think it feels a lot like X, you won't be surprised to learn why. The former head of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, created it.
But Mr Dorsey is no longer part of the team behind it, having stepped down from the board in May 2024.
He deleted his account altogether in September.

I find the above slightly concerning. I wonder why he's turned his back on his "baby".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8dm0ljg4y6o

I’m loving the descriptions of BlueSky being posted to X:

(click to expand that image)

Do I see things I don't agree with on X? yes I do, and I pay attention to how differently some people see the world and interpret events.

Do I see things that are deeply offensive to me on X? yes. Unfollow if it's someone I follow and move on.

Do I ever see Porn? no, never, apart from screen shots put up by people complaining about all the porn (check your cookies guys)

Do I still find things to interest, delight and engage me? yes I do, even day.

I'm sticking with it. Loving the new community notes feature too!

I've been on the internet since pre Web days, if you think X is bad you should have seen some of the old Usenet Newsgroups, proper Wild West 🤷🏼‍♀️

Interesting.

Do I see porn? Yes every day and I have never searched up porn on my phone so it's not my cookies

Do I find Musk objectionable and prefer not to line his pockets or support his current play thing? Yes

Do I find that despite being more on the left and following more left accounts than right, my feed is still full of very right wing posts? Yes

Do I see racism, hatred, incitement to violence and general nastiness in my for you tab? Yes

Why would I bother sticking with Twitter in this case when there are alternatives?

I don't object to seeing other points of view. I do object to streams of vitriol and false information.

The last sentence about being on the internet pre web is quite funny. All of us who are old enough to be able to read in the late 80s can say the same!

This is why I hate the discussion about people being responsible for putting themselves in echo chambers/curating what they see. Neither of you have access to the algorithms the Twitter uses. So no one can say why @Zonder getting worse content than @YouveGotNoBloodyIdea . One person could be seeing a relatively balanced feed with the occasional right wing view point and therefore assume, when someone else complains about the right wing content, that they are being a precious lefty. While the other person is seeing non stop horror.
Algorithms take away so much control over what you see on sites like Twitter but people act like it's a moral failing if you get bad things, or if you get fed up of seeing the same nonsense again and again.

I understand how algorithms work, I've written a fair few, so I probably am better at curating my content than other people might be.

I am mindful of who I engage with, what I "like", who I reply to, who I block.

I've just opened my feed - who I follow, lots of GC, a few curiosities, the bells of Notre Dame have rung for the first time since the fire - ooh and a clip of Tom Jones singing with Crosby Stills and Nash back in the 70's.

If I have time I will wander over to the "for you" section - today it's mainly people I follow anyway with a few ads for things like golf - the algorithm sensibly deducing that at my age I'm more likely to be interested in that than sky diving.....

I see less gardening posts than I used to - but then I have not been ENGAGING with gardening posts (too busy on women's issues) so the algorithm is not showing me many of them these days. It's "use it or lose it" with online content.

Like other pp up thread I have spotted comments on the ambience over at Blue sky..... looks like at the TRA twitter mods have been employed over there, so no thanks.

The owner of X

And that is an example of my primary reason for leaving Twitter. Who wants to support anything he does?

Just a little something for anyone who would like to give bsky a try

https://www.theverge.com/24295933/bluesky-social-network-custom-how-to

Musk does seem to be getting too big for his boots and thinks he’s actually VP.

But BlueSky sounds like a hellsite already.

Also - a reminder why you should never use Reddit:

freebeacon.com/culture/reddit-faces-massive-user-protest-for-banning-criticism-of-controversial-employee/

I am mindful of who I engage with, what I "like", who I reply to, who I block.

So what you're saying is that you can never, ever, click on anything by anyone you even mildly disagree with because you're 'asking' to be shown content from racists and fascists?

I've done what people are supposed to do which is follow people you don't necessarily agree with to ensure you're not living in an echo chamber, so journalists at the Telegraph and Conservative politicians and my 'for you' feed is now showing me fucking Alex Jones tweets. A few weeks back it was all Tommy Robinson. Before that Andrew Tate.

And when the owner of the site who everyone is forced to follow is retweeting guff like the new 'Inevitable West' account that was posting shite about how the 'veterans' were going to turn their back on Starmer at the Cenotaph, one thinks that however careful one might be to never engage with anything one disagrees with, the owner of the site is trying his best to see that this sort of bullshit appears on as many people's feeds as possible.

It's not just a curation problem, it's an owner of the site problem.

@Thatsenoughcoffee ,

‘Musk does seem to be getting too big for his boots and thinks he’s actually VP.’

Musk is far far more powerful than Vance.

He has Trump’s ear and also access to enough technical know how (and employees) to drive through Trump’s agenda, assuming he approves. And Starlink and Space X, which can help the U.S project power.

And, of course, he can amplify the message through Twitter, completing a ‘trifecta’ of Trump/Musk control: government, big tech and the media.

Maybe I am being a bit extreme, but the above could well be the target.

I’m far more worried about Starmer being PM than Musk having Trump’s ear and control of X. But I lean right and believe Musk is correct about many issues, whereas Starmer is just demonic.

Interesting/alarming to read about what’s being covered up about the Southport attacks on X in the past few hours.

of course you can click on it - if it interests you - and then the algorithm will show you similar things because they seem to interest you. Elon Musk is not sitting there deciding what you see and don't see.

If things stop interesting you, and you want to see less of them, then just start blocking some of the posts that appear in your feed and don't interact with them by commenting.

The basic premise of any SM algorithm is to give the user what it thinks they want and so get more users. Despite the use of the phrase AI the algorithms really don't display human level intelligence - they can't yet say to themselves, "oh she's generally a lefty and that one engagement with a right wing journalist was a one off when she was having a bad day after a night out...... so I won't show her any more right wing journalists"

For a while my Instagram was full of cute parrot videos and dogs communicating using voice buttons - I curated my way out of that the same way I got myself into it - by engaging with content I wanted to see. Liking and commenting on different kinds of posts to those.

Curating what you want to see on SM involves making smart decisions and accepting that you have to do a bit of pruning dead wood and planting seeds every now and then to get what you genuinely want.