The unfortunate part is that each individual who attempts to leave is fighting the Network Effect[0]. It's fighting against the human organism's basic social nature.
If every person wants to leave the platform but X person stays because Y person is there, and Y person stays because Z person is there, and Z person stays because X person is there then it's a feedback loop. Each person wants a better solution or platform, but none end up leaving because of the network effect.
Breaking that dependency involves the individual user but can't be overcome by the individual alone. Over time, the network re-asserts itself and monopolizes the connections.
I think Twitter is the best counterargument to this defeatism. I don't personally know anyone that uses the platform any more, and I don't recall needing it for anything for years. From that remove, it's now just the platform for lazy politicians, lazy journalists, and scammers of one form or another. If there's more exclusive information there I'm not aware of, I really don't need it.
Yes. And if something truly important should occur on the platform then it will be reported elsewhere.
What do we really think we're missing out on by not using X?
Also, for some reason, AI companies like DeepSeek who would rather post news exclusively there than vibecode their own news site.
Do you actually need that news?
No, but I'm referring to the AI news that gets posted on HN with a former Twitter link, because those companies don't have a proper news site of their own.
And love that after many years, despite going all in on the silly x name, it’s still Twitter to many.
my understanding is twitter is primarily bots at this point
i'm surprised any human is still there
then your understanding seems to be quite limited :)
what even was the point of typing that? it just reads as kindergarten bully on an ipad.
dont see how its bullying? someone is demonstrating a very childish point of view , almost to the point of preaching. which I would say a little bit of critical thinking says is otherwise. why else would so many want xcancel in the first place?
My solution to this is creating bots that repost content on sites like bluesky. The network effect can be overcome because people use a site for the content it has and not necessarily to interact with others
Of course I only do it with accounts that are very obviously intended to be public like news and government accounts otherwise x and meta can argue you were violating user privacy or some shit like that
Is there any service that exists to do this for people?
Like say you want your Twitter forwarded to your Facebook page and email list, you just punch in the logins and it does the rest?
Ideally it would fill in the details like formatting the images/video correctly
There are some examples at https://fedi.tips/crossposting-between-mastodon-and-other-so...
The key point is that you must not post in XTwitter first, but you have to use the crossposter's client as source. Pulling content out of XTwitter, even your own, is onerous.
Many.
Search for social media management tools.
If This Then That?
I used to cross post any Instagram photos to twitter with if this then that. But the platforms have made it harder.
I thought hubspot does that but looking at their website I have no idea what they do..
Is it legal?
Why wouldn't it be? I know we've all got accustomed to the idea that preventing a billionaire from extorting money gets you in trouble, and it usually does, but it's not illegal.
>Why wouldn't it be?
Well, for one, because xcancel was forced to suspend its service.
There's legal as in "what the law says", and legal as in "what the judge will order you to do", and the latter sense is not as clear-cut as we'd want it to be.
Xcancel was accused of using the twitter API. You don't have to use it. You can have a machine vision model process screenshots. You can also process the Dom. You don't offer a freely usable service or software to the public, only the final result. That final result is opinionated according to the very public accounts you want and does not offer broad scope access to accounts. You do not let the public control it nor provide a product to browse to random or posts about anything like nitter. Or you can process the content into your own news account with ai which is what most news accounts do anyways and then it becomes yours.
Is it legal to make the whole world addicted to your product? Litigation, in the same way, is a ticking time bomb for meta worldwide.
xcancel wasn't actually forced to suspend its service. It got two increasingly threatening C&Ds, but nothing actually happened to it, and the creator took it offline in an abundance of caution.
I have a solution for this problem: just delete the fucking account anyway.
problem solved
I deactivated my account when Musk took over, and am not aware of anything I’ve missed since then. Is there anything big that I missed?
I think you're playing dumb on purpose here but in general yes, you are missing out on all the friends and connections and interesting conversations you have not made. I don't know what those are for you, but they're transparently obvious for me in the counterfactual, and a lot of people on the site.
Twitter is far from special. So I guess you're missing out on all the friends and connections and interesting conversations you have not made on Threads, Facebook, Linkedin, instagram, tiktok, reddit, bluesky, mastodon, discord & tumblr.
Also twitter is the worst of all the things I've listed.
Not really relevant for public service announcements like gp is talking about. I just want a live feed of my local services updates. I get weather alerts from my city and county over text (contracted by the government through a third party platform), I would take them as a dedicated app or rss feed or anything. I'm not connecting to my friends or family through a weather alert or train delay notice
I find texting pretty decent but not ideal. Most alert systems offer it already, you know it's going to be a short message, and you'll be informed quickly of things instead of having to reach out somewhere.
Maybe there should be a texting app where you can make pages of contacts to swipe between, and you can customize notifications. If you want to get fancy, maybe local AI to determine if something looks important or not? They'll always have ALERT or something in the message.
RSS was so good for this. No wonder Google had to kill it.
RSS still exists though? Do you mean Google Reader?
By killing Google Reader they essentially killed RSS. Yes, I know there are other clients some of us still use, but Google's was the biggest and most popular.
I don't think I agree with this characterization. If you consider the open standard to be indistinguishable from the proprietary client, I'd argue it was already dead before the client got killed off.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Let's revive RSS.
It's still good, even if it's been on the floor beyond the "five second rule".
If there were an API or reliable way to delete accounts programmatically, you could create a reverse-kickstarter-like site in which you pledged automatic future deletion of your account once a critical percentage of the people you followed (or who followed you) did the same. Action would be suspended for all participants until that critical threshold was reached.
Unfortunate, yes.
Futile? No.
Remember that AT&T once had a firm grip over human communication. That didn't last.
Remember that AOL once had a firm grip over how a massive percentage of the population accessed the internet. That didn't last.
Elon Musk currently has a firm grip on social media (via X) and internet access (via Starlink). This too will not last.
X and Starlink don't even remotely have a "firm grip" over the social media or Internet access markets. They have many active competitors.
Ok. Show your work.
Which social network has larger reach than X? Which social network has stronger influence on humans who make policy decisions than X?
Which internet provider can deliver reliable access to remote regions than Starlink? Which internet provider has manipulated access in contested regions than Starlink?
Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. I don't know. What I do know is that your baseless assertions are meaningless to me. Show the facts and figures that support your claims. That's the only way to avoid being a garden-variety internet troll.
How do you define "reach" and "influence"?
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube all have more users, more daily active users, more aggregate data transferred.
Excellent question. My definition is admittedly qualitative. I spend a fair bit of time listening to commentary by people who are connected to policy decisions at the state and federal level (in the USA). An unusual amount of people admit to relying upon X as their barometer of public sentiment, despite their intellectual understanding that Elon Musk has his thumb on the scale. Most of them have admitted they understand the "water has been poisoned" but they also claim that all alternatives are inferior. This might not apply to YouTube as much as the others, but I haven't seen evidence that disproves this theory. I'm open to the possibility, for sure. This said, I believe that Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok have a profound affect on large swaths of the population. The evidence I observe suggests that X is doing more work among the people who can text someone who makes decisions. Curious to know more about your POV. What am I missing?
Those are silly questions entirely irrelevant to the point above.
How so? Defend your position.
(edit: I genuinely don't understand how your replies are anything other than ad hominem attacks. Your responses are about as effective as a toddler asking "why?" over and over and over again. Either deliver a substantive counter argument or stop replying.)
(edit 2: I assume you are the one who downvoted this reply. That only adds to the factual evidence that you are struggling to defend your position via legitimate means. This isn't a personal attack. I hoped you would engage in legitimate discourse. Please do better in the future.)
Ad hominem would be if the GP was making a personal attack on you. Saying a question is "silly" is not that.
Downvoting can also mean that the downvoter doesn't think it's worth the time to engage with prose. It's a bit arrogant to assume that a downvote means someone can't come up with a cogent argument against you; the fact that you make that assumption points even more strongly at the idea that it's not worth arguing with you.
Fair points.
I would say that classifying an argument as "silly" without any supporting evidence is borderline ad hominem because it doesn't make a substantive critique of the assertion, and instead colors the character of the opposition. But that shouldn't take away from your position.
As for your suggestion that I am being arrogant, I can see where you're coming from but I also feel as though I'm within the bounds of fairness to push for a reasoned response (instead of an emotional appeal).
All that said, thanks for replying in a way that advances the discourse. Much appreciated.
You assume incorrectly. I flagged your comment for breaking site guidelines, not downvoted. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with how the site works but it's not possible to downvote a reply to one's own comment. The button isn't there.
Okay, how did I break the guidelines per your assessment? I'm genuinely curious.
Why does Starlink matter in a Conversation about X?
Because they are both part of the SpaceX Company. They are intimately tied together.
Only in financial word games, not technically.
> Which internet provider can deliver reliable access to remote regions than Starlink?
Why do remote regions matter? No one relevant lives there.
lololol. Obviously you don't know any Ukranians.
> lololol. Obviously you don't know any Ukranians.
Please take a step back and remember that your original claim was "a massive percentage of the population accessed the internet (via starlink)"
That's demonstrably false. It's a small percentage. Even in Ukraine. You're now moving the goalposts.
No, I did not claim "a massive percentage of the population accessed the internet (via starlink)". Try again.
I said that people in REMOTE regions, by which I mean those who are underserved by traditional internet access such as fiber or coax or twisted-pair, are served by Starlink in significant numbers.
Please give demonstrable facts that dispute this claim if you disagree.
> X and Starlink don't even remotely have a "firm grip" over the social media or Internet access markets. They have many active competitors.
Starlink's market isn't "Internet access" in general. Anywhere you can get fibre, fibre will be faster and cheaper. For many use cases a cell tower works better too, if you are in its coverage area.
Starlink's market is "high bandwidth / low latency Internet access no matter where you are on Earth". And for that it is by far the market leader. Its closest competitors are way behind – second place Amazon's Kuiper has under 400 satellites in orbit, Starlink has over 11,000. So Starlink is over an order of magnitude in front.
If you define a market narrowly enough then pretty much any company has a "firm grip" on some market. That doesn't mean much in terms of overall market dynamics or broader power. My local neighborhood taqueria has a firm grip on the burrito market for a radius of at least 3 miles.
> My local neighborhood taqueria has a firm grip on the burrito market for a radius of at least 3 miles.
This is a bit of a silly comparison though – the market of providing high-speed low-latency Internet access (a highly general-purpose service) anywhere on the planet, versus the market of providing one particular type of food in a small localised area.
Remember AT&T only lost its monopoly because the government forced it to.
Yes, yes! I might be old enough to remember when that happened.
Elon Musk learned from the other two and many others. Unfortunately, Silicon Valey techno-feudalism is built to last.
I agree that SV's regressive culture is a problem. I've seen it up close. I don't have a solution, but I am concerned about where this trend might lead us.
I like this reasoning. Network effect means if a website gets very big it will be very big forever. This is why I get my news from the o rly owl on the world’s most popular website, the OffTopic Forums