
Twitter keeps losing monthly users, so it’s going to stop sharing how many - MarkMc
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18213567/twitter-to-stop-sharing-mau-as-users-decline-q4-2018-earnings
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jjbinx007
I have little sympathy. Twitter's algorithms can shadow ban accounts at any
time for seemingly any reason. I had my account locked for breaking a rule but
I never found out what the rule I had broken was.

I sometimes have replies to me I can't see unless I search my username
specifically.

Twitter support seems to be nothing more than a dumb script pretending to be a
human. There's no transparency and all these anti-user features mean I for one
an fed up with it.

When the internet was still young there was Usenet, which wasn't owned by a
single corporation. Nowadays we have to submit to whatever whims these private
companies dictate. There's no freedom of speech because they're private
spaces. Unless we have something akin to Usenet or email where blocking can be
done at individual levels but not mandated for everyone by a single
corporation I don't want to take part any more.

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StavrosK
We have that, it's called Mastodon and it's more fun than Twitter.

[https://mastodon.host/@stavros](https://mastodon.host/@stavros)

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mikestew
Twitter can and could be a lot of things, and it certainly is no longer the
thing it was when it started. It’s mostly why I rarely use it anymore. As a
microblogging tool, I think it was great. At a conference? “Heading down to
$BAR_AND_GRILL with John.” “Finally! Sunshine in Seattle today.”

But at some point it turned into what I consider the cesspool it is today.
Yelling at the wind. Building my “personal brand”. A lot of sound and fury
signifying nothing. But mainly a low signal-noise ratio, just not worth my
attention. Maybe it’s what some signed up for, but it’s not what I signed up
for ten or so years ago. And perhaps because Twitter itself can’t seem to
figure out what it wants to be, it turns into something a lot of others didn’t
signed up for, either.

What do I know, I don’t use it much anymore. But perhaps if they had a better
defined mission, and a more narrow view, they’d keep the smaller number of
users they end up with. But I guess when you’re building with other people’s
money, the mission is “MOAR USERS!”

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mc32
My best use case for it is following people or entities of note in the
industry who pretty much keep on point about their particular niche without
diverging into much else (aside from some self promotion, but that’s to be
expected and I don’t mind since I receive value from their comms).

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mikestew
Ya know, I thought I'd go that route, but I must have chosen poorly. Many
might have held the line for a while, but eventually degraded to about a 20:1
cat/food picture:"what I followed you for in the first place." But they owe me
nothing, they can do as they please.

And perhaps that's the problem, perhaps Twitter was better suited to having a
dozen, fifty or so people that you follow and who follow you. People you might
not know intimately, but at least kinda know. So while you might have to put
up with "awww, look at Ms. Sylvia Plath, isn't she the cutest cat?" on
ocassion, at least you might have some context. IOW, the way _I_ viewed
Twitter back in the day was a lot more personal and less public than it turned
out to be.

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mc32
You’re describing using Twitter initially the way WhatsApp was initially
envisioned: broadcasting statuses to friends —which kind of worked but the
problem is was it was either DM or broadcast, no group or list concept to keep
things fenced in.

So, I basically use it as a broadcast listening platform tuned to chosen
sources and works well in that regard.

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pjc50
We're back to "Twitter does not understand its own users". Partly because it's
never even attempted to take money from them.

Personally I think Twitter's destruction was triggered by the event it (and
many of us) thought of as a great success at the time: the "Arab Spring",
Tahrir Square etc. From that point on it increasingly became a political
battleground, which is increasingly bot- and sockpuppet- infested, used for
targeted harassment, and even from your _friends_ feeds you a steady stream of
miserable news.

Meanwhile the people who want to "engage with brands" or just look at cute
puppies have moved to Instagram, while the bleeding edge communities are
slowly drifting to Mastodon.

There's probably another reckoning due now that Tumblr has banned porn and
some of the affected accounts have moved to Twitter; I expect a FOSTA/SESTA-
driven purge sometime in the next year or so.

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Grue3
Guess locking people's accounts for nothing at all isn't good for your growth!
My own account, which I barely use, was locked a few days ago because of
"suspicious activity". Not posting anything is suspicious activity now? And
there was no way to re-enable it without entering my phone number. I'm
surprised anyone is still putting up with this bullshit.

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villgax
Nice, I guess next all publicly trading automakers stop releasing car sales
number because of car accidents?

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josefresco
No, a better analogy would be like Toyota not breaking down individual model
sales numbers because the Camry isn't selling well compared to competitors.

