Now that E**n M**k has taken over:

1. My HAWT TAEK on Twitter in the M*sk era is that, like many things, it will decline gradually, and then all at once.
2. We should remember that the original purpose of Twitter was to allow groups of friends to chat with each other (e.g., where are we going for dinner?). It wasn’t designed to be this.
3. The irony is Twitter was originally supposed to be more like Mastodon actually is, but Mastodon can’t scale in the same way so it can’t be profitable (if Twitter ever can be).
4. Also, re ‘political twitter’, celebrity journalists, often with blue checks, make this site hell, albeit it in a different way from the Nazis et alia. While we do get to see them showing their asses, they too often promote misinformation, just the acceptable kind. Blocking/muting them makes Twitter so much more pleasant (of course, one should block the Nazis too).
5. Donald Trump is going to be really annoying. Even though too many people were screenshoting his ‘Truths’, it’s going to be worse. Just block him and the rest of the assholes.
6. If you’re still using the algorithm, stop. It’s just going to be a cesspool of Daily Caller-esque bigotry, with COVID misinformation sprinkled on top. You don’t have to abuse yourself.
7. Someone needs to make a new Twitter.
8. I have no idea what this means for the various science twitters. I actually use Twitter to find interesting and professional useful science (did that yesterday; will be showing up at some point in a database near you!).
9. This will have to be a longer post, but I don’t think this is the end of online organizing on the left (construed broadly). I would argue the era where online activism actually had the most pull was 2002-2007, and it was old school blogs and trackbacks (remember those?). The reason it was successful had less to do with the technology per se, it had more to do with money. Before Google hoovered up all of the ad revenue, you actually could make decent (ok) money in political blogging, and ‘pro-am’ people could use it to fund things like canvassing trips. In other words, online activists were being paid to do their work. Critically, that payment was independent of both political parties and news organizations. In a sense, Twitter has been taking money that could be supporting online organizing (along with apolitical writers**). I’m not sure what the replacement could be, but the key thing won’t be the technology platform, but an income stream. Like I said, I hope I’ll have time to flesh this out, but a new tech model needs to be sustainable for the writers (whatever they may write about).

That’s all for now, folks.

*And surviving in many areas wasn’t quite as hard (e.g.,. housing prices weren’t as crazy).

**I will not use that odious phrase, ‘content provider.’