I think my block list collectively became unblocked, even before the "can see but can't touch" block bullshit showed up, which made me mad, but it was the ads that completely ruined that site for me. every three posts, then the replies had ads, then the autoplay videos. it was exhausting.
Far be it for me to rain on anyone’s parade regarding their feelings towards a website I left almost a decade ago, but the alarm bells should have gone off when people like Ted Cruz and Jair Bolsonaro loudly praised the hostile takeover
I deactivated my main but I have a twitter account I've never used that I check the "for you" page on every few days. It's amazing how fast it went from elon posts, temu ads and racists to a flood of engagement bait videos (sprinkled with elon posts, temu ads and racists).
And the replies, too. The other day I saw someone post that joke about how every ethnicity thinks it’s so unique that they love food, holidays, and their grandmas, and there was some dude underneath saying some regurgitated slip like “food, grandmothers, and holidays, these are the true values!”
Ugh yes, I noticed that even before the election. All the replies were just blue checks paraphrasing the original tweet. And once you got past those it was just a bunch of rape threats and whatnot. I found when I came here I had been trained to hesitate to even open replies.
Absolute 🎯. Great read. There is one other thing I believe was the death rattle - boosting the paypig replies.
I know I’ll eventually need ads or a subscription to keep it functional, but if I’m forced to read the dogshit opinions of every debate nerd with $4.99 to spare, I’m out.
What’s crazy is I must have been following you since like 2017 and I had no idea you had a newsletter or even wrote outside Twitter until I came to Bluesky.
I was a big marketplace of ideas guy in my late teens/early 20s, but that was the 90s, when Online was in its infancy. How any adult can seriously entertain that belief in 2024 is just baffling to me
I feel like there used to be a genuine discussion when an article was posted like for example by the NYT. The past 6 months I'll click and there is not a single real comment. All are blue check AI bots with generic stupid comments that are clearly generated to farm money from his stupid monetization
I always feels like I'm under the influence of something when I read a summary of what happens when right-wing trolls only have themselves to interact with.
"He's at best a goldfish-brained man who can't remember what promises he made, & at worst & most likely,an inveterate liar who loves adulation & $ above all else. So it's unsurprising that the changes he made to X all fit into this mold: half-assed, lazy, designed 2 save $, & just downright idiotic"
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That's genius.
I know I’ll eventually need ads or a subscription to keep it functional, but if I’m forced to read the dogshit opinions of every debate nerd with $4.99 to spare, I’m out.
It's just a cesspool now.
thanks, great article.