Twitter is still influencing the rest of the web (look at its influence on reddit since Musk bought Twitter, and Spez started wanting to live in his skin). I don't think we can just take the good without the bad and assume a net positive.
It's not dead though, it's still linked to everywhere, from big news to niche communities because it still has that critical mass and inertia.
And I have to be cynical of the Fediverse, but realistically, what replaces it, at least here in the US? Discord? No, thanks, I'd at least rather have information be public.
I'm speaking as someone who has never used Twitter, but I can't ignore it, as much as I'd like to.
If you think X is getting linked at anything approaching the level Twitter was back in the day ... where have you been? That platform is slowly bleeding out his billions of investment (well, some of his, but lots of other peoples' money I don't mind seeing burn, either)...
It's still everywhere in my news/internet diet.
It's bleeding, for sure, but it's big. Its gone bad. But I think its premature to say its collapse is a good thing, because it just won't go away.
It will be interesting to see where it ends up after the election, one way or another.
It's so big that it can take a lot of bleeding before it dies. It doesn't help that there is no significant enough consensus yet on an alternative.
It seems like some people are flocking to bsky, probably because it has better visibility and seems more accessible than Mastodon ("What's an instance? How do I pick?"). Others are heading to Threads just because it's there already.
If enough people move to some other platform to generate a critical mass, they'll pull others too. Until then, inertia will keep X rolling a good while to come.
The future isn't one big town square. The future is lots of interconnected communities.
I, for one, have no interest in the corporate internet.
I share your hope. I'm just offering the caveat that it might not go as quickly and smoothly as you expect (unless I'm reading your comments wrong - do correct me!)
I never gave a timeline, I don't think. All I see is fewer links and major investors writing down their investments. 🤷♂️
I disagree, not really an unpopular opinion.
The only reason that this is unpopular is that there are a lot of things that happened to the web that are far better than some overhyped group text vomiting website going downhill.
*Popular opinion
For me, it kept a lot of the worst of the idiots away from places like reddit.
As soon as xitter got bad, lots of them left. You see, those kinds of weaponsied, unhigned right wingers are so repulsive to be around, they can't even stand each other. More so, they dont even want to have a conversation or an exchange of ideas. They literally just want to rant at people, parroting the lines they read somewhere else at anyone they think disagrees with them.
If everyone agrees with you, you have no one to rant at.
Unpopular?
Outside of our very small internet bubble, yes that's an incredibly unpopular opinion. By and large, people love Twitter, as evidenced by it still being one of the most-used platforms around.
I mean to some extent you aren't wrong.
If it wasn't for Twitter going downhill I am not sure if Mastodon and the rest of the Fediverse would had become as populated as they are now. While Reddit might had maybe gave some usership, both combined going bad really helped.
I don't see this as an unpopular opinion, but I do agree with it - at least here (Brazil) Twitter was evolving into a containment cage for nutjobs and morons, until it was blocked. (And it's damn easy to find who's who in the Bluesky diaspora, as the nutjobs/morons miss Twitter while the saner people are glad to see it locally gone.)
Public micro blogging overall is a bane, so yes.
Exactly, that's why I never used Twitter, and it's why I don't use Mastodon. I don't want to follow people, I want to follow ideas, and the Reddit/Lemmy model fits what I'm looking for better.
Unfortunately most of our local politicians remained there with the crazies.
I think that's what is kind of dangerous about the decline of it. At the end it's just a cesspool full of "those" people who are even further removed from reality
I mean Musk said Twitter was a Bad Thing and problematic.
Then a year or so later bought it, and immediately started doing things which reduced it's popularity and influence.
I think he wanted to run it into the ground or make it a fashist/rightwing/propaganda site before the US elections and it looks like he's pretty much there. It's in a horrible state. Could be worse, but it's really bad.
I think he had no god dammed idea what he was doing and still doesn’t.
Unpopular opinion? I thought this was a popular opinion.
I never had a twitter account. The entire premise was dumb to begin with. The only way I came in contact with twitter was when shitty journalists just took tweets and used them as a story. But that's more of a journalism problem than anything else.
I thought it was just getting good.
I never actually had an account or much inclination to use it but it seemed like the first online service ubiquitous enough for local government and business notifications. In that sense, it was just starting to be a real benefit for an informed populace
However ~~downvoting as~~ that seemed more like a prerequisite to your posted opinion - I’ll agree that it’s fine for all the loonies to rant at each other there, but that makes the opinion “popular” …… crap, wrong community
Imagine thinking that platform only "went bad" recently.
The SCP facility has been breached
Once it finally crumbled, they have to go somewhere
No twatter links sure, but they'll go to shittier sites
Or worse, the very sites you use
Twitter is defined entirely by what is followed, you can stay completely out of the toxic far right stuff and block those that don't know where they are. There are still plenty of sub communities there that exist no where else and you can control your feed better than Lemmy and other forum like systems. Twitter overall is declinimg but it's not the full picture because what is happening doesn't impact lots of people who use the platform that much.
i feel like all good things there good when there on the edge and then comes mass adoption and along with it the bots the ads and the bs ive noticed alot of the old reddit trolls that used to farm the ama groups moving to lemmy
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