Twitter really did shit the bed about a week ago. I'm just going to talk from personal experience btw, I'm sure someone with a statistical understanding of Twitter's business model could have a different (and more informed) view of things, but here's my understanding of it:
I have to say, I quite enjoyed it when Musk started to irk the Blue Checks and the journos. The Community Notes, the Twitter Files... it was pretty fun to watch people that thought themselves objects of unimpeachable integrity get brought up on their ideological excesses (which are many). That was kind of a honeymoon period. Lots of prominent schizo accounts deemed too dangerous for 'old Twitter' returned - that was good too. Say what you want about people like BAP - and, believe me, I have innate distrust for 'online personalities' in general, including his - but these are the sorts of wackos that give character to the Internet and always have done. And of course I chuckled when NPR and the BBC became 'state-affiliated media'... what else are they?
Now, I always browsed Twitter as a bystander, and never made an account there. This is because to get any serious engagement (correct me if I'm wrong here), you have to continually post, and that seemed like something only a truly sad individual would do (and yet here I am on Agora Road!). I read somewhere that a small number of posters drive most of the engagement on the site - from experience, I'd say that's accurate. I eventually moved to using Nitter to browse, which proved an excellent way of maximising privacy whilst avoiding setting up an account there (one and the same thing, almost). All was well, and I wasted quite some time on that site imbibing the ramblings of the insane.
Fast forward a couple months. We always knew it would end this way. First of all, to stop people from 'training AI' on the site, Elon put a totally absurd cap on the number of Tweets even verified accounts could read. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. And then, in a moment of total arrogance, an account became necessary to view the site. Other changes around this time effectively killed off Nitter, and thus rendered Twitter's content off-limits to the unregistered. Excuse my French, but what the fuck was that all about?
I don't know, as I say, how many users are really only lurkers. I'd wager quite a few, for a simple reason. People go onto the Internet for things they cannot get in real life, inasmuch as 'real life' hasn't already become a part of the Internet. Sometimes, what they look for is company in a lonely world, maybe a puzzle to divert themselves, or some music to fill in the silence. A lot of the time, they're there for things too seething, too bizarre for normal life. They want to read up on 'true crime', or listen to the weirdest sonic oddities, or meet people with some autistically-obscure interest they share. They want to
to some Godawful porno catering to some arcane and un-indulgable fetish (Not me tho! Furries, however...). They want to plunge into the depths of something unknowable.
For that, most people don't want to give over a name, an E-mail address, and a phone number. They want to keep that untouchable, unconscious self at a distance, and let it live online when it needs to be satisfied. The most successful social media sites always allowed some degree of anonymity, because it is only then that their users can really express themselves. Even if, as in the examples I've mentioned, what you're doing is perfectly legal and normal - many people have an interest in serial killers - the impulse to hide that interest away is only natural. In an era when the Feds can come pick you up
- seemingly effortlessly - for a couple mean tweets, who's going to want to browse with all their info attached, trawling through humanity's worst on Twitter dot com, not knowing what they'll find, on a site whose present owner acknowledged was in bed with threelettercels? Who's gonna click on the Messytails media tab with an account tied to their mobile phone number, even if 'poop-oatmeal' imagery is far from a felony, over concerns for their privacy?
So, in short, Twitter shit itself permanently, for me at least, by walling itself off to frontends (even if Nitter now works), and then demanding registration to take part in it. Nobody wants to register to take part in the Internet. The draw of being online is the way it allows people to cultivate different sides of themselves, emboldened by anonymity, and this is the danger of it too (Armin Meiwes, for example). You cannot be 'the world's town square' whilst sitting behind a wall like that, no matter how big your userbase is.
The solution probably lies in FOSS technology, which was always better than proprietary stuff anyway (shoot me!), and the application of common sense too - if your 'platform' only needs you for ad revenue, and is run by a billionaire, you will, inevitably, be fucked in the end like the feudal serf you are, and you shouldn't become reliant on it, ever. Stuff like neocities.org is pretty fun, but better still is doing things yourself. Host your own web domain if you're really determined - I used Luke Smith's landchad.net to set up a couple sites easily (say what you want about him, but it's a great tutorial) - and that gives you a lot of freedom. Blockchain-based apps like Odysee are likewise very promising. The further away from the whims of tech bosses the Internet gets, the better for it. And as for Threads, I'm holding back to see how that'll turn out...
