I am not on Twitter, having been counseled that the platform would offer me far too many opportunities to make a damn fool of myself.
I do however keep tabs on it as an opinion/editorial channel and as a crude measure of the zeitgeist. And since Mr. Musk's purchase of Twitter I observed many users state they were leaving Twitter and asked a young lady who knows about such things what was going on.
Apparently there are two memes that are used as explanations: 1) Twitter is not an airport, there is no requirement to announce your departure. and 2) the people who say they are leaving are attention whores trying to convince the world they are important. Interestingly many don't actually leave Twitter or do leave and are back in days/weeks. They just want to bleat: "you're sure going to miss me when I'm gone." The meme attached to this is: "How can we miss you if you won't go away?"
Yesterday she sent me a thread that is a bit less lighthearted:
Media figures all seem to agree that Twitter has gotten much worse since Elon Musk took over. If you aren’t seeing what they’re seeing, it’s because your experience of this website has historically been very different from theirs. https://t.co/QVBlQFrp2j
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) October 28, 2023
Prior to Musk’s Twitter, a curated group of about 500,000 users out of Twitter’s 368 million users had blue check status. The message many of them broadcast was that this wasn’t very important, but it absolutely was, and it’s the reason they had a special experience on Twitter.
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) October 28, 2023
First of all, blue checks get — and have always gotten — significantly more favorable treatment from the algorithm that populates your timeline. You are more likely to see tweets from people you follow who have blue checks.
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) October 28, 2023
Second of all, blue checks got to shape the discourse. Replies from blue checks go directly underneath the original post, above all replies from unverified users. This gives you a lot more exposure.
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) October 28, 2023
David Leavitt, a notorious Twitter ghoul who became famous for calling police on a Target store manager who refused to sell him a $100 electric toothbrush for one cent built a platform of 400,000 followers by having a blue check he got from a media organization that fired him and…
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) October 28, 2023
The other thing that verified users had was a special tab that showed them only responses from other verified users. When media figures describe pre-Musk Twitter as feeling like a cocktail party, it’s because they only looked at their verified interactions, and verification was…
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) October 28, 2023
So, Twitter for media professionals prior to Musk’s acquisition of the company provided them with a megaphone to broadcast to a large audiences, and also a screen so they only had to read content from other designated special people.
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) October 28, 2023
Musk stripped verification from most of the legacy verified accounts and sold verification to everyone else for $8 per month, and suddenly the verified mentions were filled with riffraff and many of the special people weren’t showing up in them anymore.
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) October 28, 2023
In addition, top replies to viral tweets were no longer guaranteed to come from important media people with the right opinions. Suddenly, the people who had controlled and shaped the discourse could no longer dictate which topics trended, which tweets were at the top of the…
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) October 28, 2023
I still like the "Twitter isn't an airport" line.
