this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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It's amazing to me how much people have rewritten history since musk took over. Twitter was always shit. It's worse now, yeah. A lot worse. But it's like taking a shit on a smaller pile of shit. All this talk about how it was a real boon for humanity and so important it should be regulated as a utility is equal parts idiotic and hilarious.
It's shit, but it had significant uses. Namely, getting breaking news from trusted journalists, and speaking directly to businesses for consumer support when other methods typically went unanswered.
That's not to mention the Arab Spring. Sure, significant change that people had hoped for didn't follow through, but it still spooked them enough that one of the incumbent leaders helped buy the website to undermine it.
Also, when you compare it to Facebook it certainly was better. Even reddit was better, then followed it down the drain.
I get the feeling (I wouldn't really know, haven't been there in months) that Reddit is still significantly better. Sure, it's worse now, but it still has active communities on pretty much any topic imaginable. Lemmy is on its way, but won't be there for a few years I think.
There's some genuine communities lingering on, but almost all of the larger communities have become part of the power mods' "projects".
I was shook the other day when I stopped by reddit and saw, "just a normal day in russia" at the top of the front page. As Americans we need to give up on the idea of a non-political social media because it always gets co-optd into some psy-ops bullshit.
I 100% agree it was shit. Sometimes though, that shit fertilized real growth.
That said, lesson shouldn't be, "we need twitter." It should be, let's populate similar platforms so we can have this resource in the future.
It was both good and bad, period.