Twitter/X is worse than Fox News.
It has become the comment section of a conspiracy site.
Twitter/X is an Elon Musk vanity project.
I had never been a heavy Twitter participant. The short bursts of characters that created a tweet used to be good for breaking news alerts. Serious people used it. I was curious about what serious people had to say.
Last night I gave Twitter -- now called X -- a test, in preparation for this morning's post. I decided to report exactly what popped up on my Twitter/X feed. There are two choices of settings: "Following" and "For You." I clicked Following. Supposedly I signed up to get posts from people who pop up on my feed.
First a message from Elon Musk about D.O.G.E., his Department of Government Efficiency named after his DOGE cryptocurrency. I have never intentionally followed Elon Musk.
Then a short video depicting the U.S. southern border, with Mexicans (provisioned by a Bud Lite stand) storming a wall. They are surprised when a giant robot machine that looked like Donald Trump stomped on the immigrants.
Then a post urging readers to boycott the coffee shop of a woman in New Jersey who said she didn't like Trump voters.
I most certainly never signed up to "follow" these posts.
I clicked to go to the "For You" feed, which is the Twitter/X guess of what I might like. First up was a video of a younger Donald Trump saying he didn't drink alcohol.
Then I got a video of NFL football players on the sidelines swaying with arms high, with voiceover narrative saying that players all over the country are mimicking the Trump dance.
This morning I thought I would check my work. I opened up Twitter/X and clicked on the "For You" setting again. The first thing I received was a message from Musk. I don't dislike the message. I don't like debt, either personal debt, business debt, or national debt. Notice that Musk drew attention not to the debt that accumulated under Trump and his 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, but rather to the debt starting in 2020, which debt is primarily caused by a continuation of the 2017 Tax law during Biden's presidency.
Twitter/X is Elon Musk's. He can do with it what he wants. But the site isn't very useful anymore, except as a way to see what Elon Musk cares about.
Serious people are abandoning the site.
16 comments:
Paul Krugman of the New York Times discusses the demise of x, just like you. He suggests Blueskys will be replacing it as some point. The more I get to know Musk, the less impressed I am in him. X is going to be like MySpace, something from the past.
Social media must have it’s uses, but it always struck me as a colossal waste of time. It’s also probably the major reason why disinformation and crackpot conspiracy theories have become so prevalent (immigrants eating our cats and dogs – indeed). Social media and texting have reduced our interactions to something best characterized by the Tappet brothers’ motto: NON IMPEDITI RATIONE COGITATIONIS.
I saw a meme going around the other day:
Musk blew $44 billion on Twitter, and all he got was control of all three branches of the government.
Peter,
Part of the problem may be who are you following?
If you follow smart people who you want to hear from, then that’s what will largely populate your Following tab.
For instance, I just found an interestingpost by Nate Silver that linked to an article he wrote in the New York Times.
If, as I suspect, you aren’t following very many people, the app probably populates your Following tab with what the algorithm thinks you might like.
Maybe must should rename X to be RedSky. 😱😀
Not that it's true, but what an odd thing to crow about.
If you're commenting on Peter's post, I disagree.
Social media content plays a big role in the lives of many, unfortunately.
Having never used Twitter/X, I've heard people saying it has gone downhill since EM bought it and that BlueSky is a better option
Peter's real-world experience is helpful to fill in the blanks.
No, he just thinks he did.
Eventually, EM will be cast aside.
Without corporate welfare and lax immigration policies he'd be nothing. He's not much better than nothing as it is.
No, I was actually commenting on Michael's meme about Musk.
non liquet
"Unencumbered by the thought process" - seems pretty clear to me.
I suspect the intent of that meme was more humorous than serious. That’s how I took it.
The big thing Musk did was change the algorithm. The "For You" page was just that, it gave you suggestions of things that you are likely to engage with based on things that you viewed, liked, shared, and posted on the website.
Musk changed it to where that matter what you did, even if you had an account that had no relation to politics, you would get a feed a stream of Republican red meat posts.
Whether it's X or something equally degenerate, roughly half the American people get an all-propaganda media diet that takes them down a rabbit hole where swallowing Trump's Kool-Aid seems normal. It snot.
I can confirm that Twitter/X is no longer the “public square.” I deactivated my account with more than 3300 followers because, as someone not willing to pay for a blue checkmark, I got practically no response when I posted something. No one was seeing my posts because Musk decided I didn’t matter. The algorithms were changed to favor paying customers and, apparently, right wing posters. There is one person I always look for, Niall Harbison, who feeds, neuters and rescues street dogs in Thailand. He no longer popped up automatically on my feed. I’ve been using both Threads and Bluesky. Both are far better than X. There are no bots, and abusive types are kicked out. Bluesky is picking up over 1 million users a day. I think it will be the biggest beneficiary of Musk’s foolish management of X.
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