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I'm not very active on Mastodon, but saw this post - browsing the bluesky hashtag for a bit afterwards did not really give me much info. I can definitely imagine enshittification happening there, but what is causing the current drama in particular?

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[-] toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 34 points 4 days ago

oof. is that what this is about? that's a big thing for some people - especially now.

i know what you're saying with your last sentence, but it also allows people to be tracked down and held accountable for criticizing trumps favourite things.

[-] Lumidaub@feddit.org 41 points 4 days ago

Not like you have to be verified.

[-] toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

i just still don't get it. like, twitter was a 2012 thing, back when text messages were a thing with limitations. now, the only limitation you have is texting between an apple and an android. why the fuck is twitter even still a thing - if not for the fact that most people can't take a thought longer than 140 fucking characters?

[-] Lumidaub@feddit.org 34 points 4 days ago

Wha? Because this is not "texting"? I don't know what you're asking.

[-] toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago

twitter was founded as an app that allowed you to basically broadcast a text message. back then, sms messaging only allowed for 140 characters max per message. that's why twitter became so big - it was basically a great way to shout headlines out to everyone who wanted to hear you. this was back in the days where the internet was still becoming a viable commercial thing and people were still mostly using tvs/cds/landlines.

now, texting is pretty much indistinguishable from emailing, and everybody's phones are fully on the web. the only thing imo that's still keeping tweets around is that people don't want to consider options that provide for a reason they might have to read more.

[-] missingno@fedia.io 26 points 4 days ago

The broadcast part is what matters, not the character limit. A normal SMS message has just one recipient, maybe a few more for a group MMS, but a Tweet goes out to the world wide web. Although Twitter was designed such that it could be used via SMS, that never defined the purpose of the platform, and changes to the SMS protocol do not obsolete Twitter's use case.

[-] Lumidaub@feddit.org 14 points 4 days ago

I am still having serious trouble following. Is your problem the fact that there's a character limit?

[-] toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago

twitter is an outdated phone app that was built for SMS back when text messages had a limit. it should have had a predictable lifespan, but now it's become a fake-ai-assisted culture war battleground that's run by the world's biggest idiot and oligarch.

i'm having trouble following what the fuck you're having "serious" trouble following. and i'm starting to think you aren't asking this question in good faith.

[-] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 17 points 4 days ago

Twitter definitely was not any attempt to emulate the function of SMS.

I can't tell if you don't know what SMS is for, or what Twitter was for.

[-] toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

where am i wrong? twitter - as i understand - started as a phone-based application which had a 140-character limitation. where did that limit come from?

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 16 points 4 days ago

started as a phone-based application

It did not. It took 4 years before they launched an official mobile app. The char limit was solely a marketing ploy.

[-] toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

you're right, i'm wrong. i addressed it in another comment.

[-] octopus_ink@slrpnk.net 7 points 4 days ago

where am i wrong?

Apparently somewhere here people have finally convinced you that you are entirely wrong about the origin of twitter.

But the word you've been looking for (which also describes Mastodon, Calkey, etc) is microblog.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging

[-] scott@lem.free.as 7 points 4 days ago

The limit was there because in its early incarnation it allowed post-submission via SMS. SMS already had the 140-character limit for other technical reasons due to the GSM networks.

[-] Lumidaub@feddit.org 4 points 4 days ago

I thought we were talking about Bluesky here. Sure, Twitter can go die.

[-] toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

goodnight, comrade.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Twitter was not founded as a mobile app. Twitter was (officially) desktop-only for the 1st 4 years of its existence. Calling it a SMS-replacement app is ludicrous, since it mainly existed on PC for the first few years. I personally think the concept is dumb, but it became famous because it forced people to keep their messages short and interesting (aka clickbait?), not because it replaced SMSes.

Early on you could tweet by sending Twitter an SMS. (Not that this contradicts what you've said. I still don't know what they're getting at)

[-] toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

holy shit, really? that's even dumber than what my idiot-mind-retcon just did.

[-] Lumidaub@feddit.org 5 points 4 days ago

Breaking: Early internet was weird and people tried a lot of weird things. More at 11.

[-] toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

i was there for crystallinks and geocities.

you think you know gifs?!? you don't know gifs! you don't know nothing!!

[-] tauren@lemm.ee 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

With a 140 characters limit, silly and meaningless rants like yours cannot exist. That's a win!

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 18 points 4 days ago

Twitter was a thing because celebrities won't text at you directly.

Not that texting can't be toxic and social, though. Whatsapp groups are a major vector of far right radicalization, among other super shady stuff. All social media was a mistake.

[-] Sergio@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 days ago

All social media was a mistake.

They weren't a mistake. They were deliberate and calculated. They came to us with lies and fake gifts, but ultimately offered only serfdom.

[-] sem 11 points 3 days ago

One criticism I saw was that if you want to verify, you have to use a Google Form and log in with a Google account, which goes against lots of people's efforts to get off Google.

[-] toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

yeah, i'm a bit pissed that proton blocks verification emails unless you provide a phone number

this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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