{"id":4991,"date":"2023-07-06T16:12:43","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T23:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=4991"},"modified":"2023-07-06T16:14:31","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T23:14:31","slug":"bring-on-the-twitter-killers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=4991","title":{"rendered":"Bring on the Twitter Killers!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The whole problem with social media (apart from being a hazard to some people\u2019s sanity) is simple and ancient: Too much power in too few hands<\/em>. And the threat to sanity could be managed if people cared to. There should not be five corporations controlling 90% of social media. There should be fifty. No, scratch that. Five hundred<\/em>. My older readers might remember the BBS era. Those are the kinds of numbers I\u2019d like to see.<\/p>\n

Well, the solution may be in sight. Every time I turn around, someone is pushing a new, um, \u201cTwitter-killer.\u201d There are lots, most of them pretty new, some of them still requiring invites to join. Meta\u2019s Instagram subsidiary has created something called Threads, which is still invite only and (obviously) I have not seen. (I don\u2019t even think their server is publicly visible.)<\/p>\n

Another one being pushed by the mainstream media is Spill<\/a>, which is still invite-only, and targeted at Black folks. (I won\u2019t say \u201cAfrican-Americans\u201d because as best I know Spill\u2019s reach will be global.) There\u2019s Amino<\/a>, for teens. I\u2019m 71, but again, Yay! <\/p>\n

Lifewire has a list<\/a>. Have any of you every heard of Plurk<\/a>? I haven\u2019t. It has \u201can adorable interface.\u201d Yay wow! (When\u2019s the last time you saw the word \u201cadorable\u201d expressed without irony?) Aside from Mastodon and Tumblr, I\u2019ve heard of none of them. But yeah, bring \u2018em on.<\/p>\n

The best list of Twitter alternatives I\u2019ve seen here comes (predictably) from Vice<\/a>. It\u2019s a good article; at least skim it. New to me were Cohost<\/a>, Post<\/a>, Substack Notes, Spoutible<\/a>, CounterSocial<\/a>, and WT.Social. Other lists are out there, and many other social media sites are new (or new-ish) that I have heard of, like Bluesky, which is touted as a \u201cdecentralized Twitter.\u201d Another that\u2019s been around for some time is Discord<\/a>. A lot of my friends are on LinkedIn<\/a>, and although I\u2019ve had a login for years, I don\u2019t check it much.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s Micro.blog, which competes (as best I can tell) with Substack, though leaning toward shorter posts. Ello<\/a> dates back to 2014 and was created by and still caters to artists and designers.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are Gab<\/a> and Minds<\/a>, which offered less censorship of conservative users and positions. Parler was once in that space too, but I think they\u2019re now defunct, though there is some talk about a relaunch.<\/p>\n

My point? The more social networks there are, the less power a handful of social networks will have. Network effects are real, of course, and so is tribalism. I infer from the descriptions of some of these sites that they are silos for a particular ideology. That\u2019s all to the good; I don\u2019t like ideology. Elon Musk\u2019s purchase of Twitter thinned out Twitter\u2019s ideological machinery radically. That\u2019s one reason I see no reason to leave Twitter. Musk is reinventing space technology. I like space technology. He\u2019s ballsy, and seems to be deliberately annoying certain categories of users who liked Twitter\u2019s traditional censorship via cowardly tricks like shadowbanning. <\/p>\n

I see lots of people saying they\u2019re leaving Twitter. I wonder how many actually are. I\u2019m all for Twitter refugees finding a comfy home somewhere else. The sort of people who will flee a network because it doesn\u2019t censor enough<\/em> are people I\u2019d just as soon not hang out with.<\/p>\n

Of course, most of these networks will probably croak after a couple of years. But some may grow, and siphon off some of Twitter\u2019s bellyachers. (I have some hopes for Bluesky and Threads.)<\/p>\n

Will the new social networks really kill Twitter? Don\u2019t be absurd. Most of us are happy with Musk\u2019s changes. I\u2019m even considering getting a verified account, just for the hell of it. I used to pay for Compuserve and LiveJournal, after all. I\u2019m not averse to paying for what I use, if it\u2019s useful enough.<\/p>\n

Twitter, so far, has been more than useful enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The whole problem with social media (apart from being a hazard to some people\u2019s sanity) is simple and ancient: Too much power in too few hands. And the threat to sanity could be managed if people cared to. There should not be five corporations controlling 90% of social media. There should be fifty. No, scratch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-4991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideasandanalysis","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4991"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4994,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4991\/revisions\/4994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}