Tag: twitter

I try not to write about topics about which a lot of other people have said what I’d say, or, indeed, written it better than I would. Musk’s takeover of Twitter is one of those topics. There have been plenty of excellent articles about what it means and about how Musk could really screw up Twitter by destroying the feeling of safety which advertisers require and by misunderstanding that the users are the product, not the customers.

I’ve been on Twitter since August of 2008 (@iwelsh). I visit it almost every day, and for many years, I spent a lot of time there. Nowadays, it probably takes up 30 to 45 minutes of my day. My account isn’t huge; I have something like over four thousand followers, and I follow about thirteen-hundred. (Following too many people is a sign of disrespect and twitter-gaming, because it means you don’t actually read them.)

For me, Twitter takes the place of the email lists I was on in the 2000s and which collapsed near the end of the decade. “Townhouse,” which some people may have heard of, was one, but only one of them. Emails on these lists would often include links to articles of interest and discussion of important topics of the day.

Each list would have a primary topic; I was on lists that focused on domestic US politics, foreign affairs, the tech industry, and so on. The lists acted as both a filter and a way to read people discussing topics in which I was interested — often, very well-informed and smart people. Because the lists were semi-private, there was some additional value: People could be frank.

These lists collapsed near the end of the decade, in part because of a series of leaks. A lot of the value was that it was “off the record.”

Twitter, frankly, isn’t quite as good for quality of discussion about controversial topics, simply because it is public. You can’t “let your hair down” and everything you say can and probably will be used against you. But it is still a venue where everyone talks about everything, and if you curate who you follow, you can still connect with people interested in specific topics discuss them and share article links and so on.

I don’t just follow political types; I follow book-twitter, archeology-twitter, a bunch of artists, a fair chunk of the crypto-crowd, some pagans and hermeticists, classicists, and so on.

A lot of what passes in my Twitter-stream is chuff, especially from the political junkies, but a lot is smart and interesting and seeing what the people I have chosen to follow think is worth talking about is useful in itself.

Twitter is a curated experience, and if Musk doesn’t fuck it up (his idea of not showing non-blue checks content would destroy its value — most of the best accounts I follow don’t have a blue check), it will remain useful because you choose who  you follow. It’s just that simple. Turn the timeline to chronological so the algo doesn’t go all Facebook on you, and it’s much like early Facebook was before Zuckerberg screwed it up by trying to over-monetize it.

A timeline on Twitter is just people you chose to follow talking or re-tweeting something they like someone else wrote.

And frankly, at it’s base, that’s marvelous. If you don’t like your Twitter feed, well, you chose it, and you can change it.

This can easily be fucked up, of course. Facebook screwed this up with algos instead of just giving you a chronological timeline of people you chose to follow; Twitter has gone some way down that road, but it can still be made to work. Musk may screw that up, and if he does, I’ll leave. If he doesn’t, I’ll stay.

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