The vast majority of commenters here fundamentally misunderstand what Twitter is, or rather what it has become.
It's not a "social network" anymore. I mean, it is in the technical sense - you and I can both sign up for an account. But what it is today is an elite coordination mechanism, and Twitter became this because it was the first of it's kind and some sort of momentum or technological inertia put us where we're at. Journalists, politicians, business people, elites more generally etc. all use this thing to coordinate what they think about basically everything.
So you're really asking "how do I create another semi-public elite coordination system that could step in if Twitter falls apart".
> Journalists, politicians, business people, elites more generally etc. all use this thing to coordinate what they think about basically everything.
In the UK this is done over Whatsapp. And occasionally email (see Suella Braverman bravely leaking confidential documents, getting sacked, and getting rehired). Their twitter content is the output of that process. You can see MPs tweeting coordinated statements.
If twitter has any value it's been in enabling all sorts of random communities, especially marginalised ones, to have a voice and coordinate. That was its role in the Arab Spring movement, for example. But there's a limit to how far that can go.
(People always forget that there are entire subcultures they aren't aware of on Twitter which you only see when they achieve viral escape. It's a gain-of-function lab for viral content)
* a purveyor of short announcements ("news-breaking tweets from politicians and celebrities") and shared content. [1]
* a purveyor of advertising. "Twitter's revenues are mainly derived from advertising rather than its user base." [0] "Advertising services generated $4.5 billion, or about 89%, of Twitter's revenue in FY 2021. [...] Twitter generates most of its advertising revenue by selling promoted products, including Promoted Ads and Twitter Amplify, Follower Ads, and Twitter Takeover, to advertisers. [1]
* a speculative investment whose investors want to maximise profit. "Listed on the New York Stock Exchange for just under nine years, Twitter has posted a net loss every year, except 2018 and 2019 when it made a profit of just over $1 billion." [0]
* according to Musk, the product could be a "public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive [...] extremely important to the future of civilization." [0]
Twitter's approach of contextless messages of limited length has made Twitter particularly suitable for shouting into the void. There's little context, unlike in a longer Facebook-style post, and every reaction stands on its own. It's only really suitable for announcements, not for meaningful discussion. Threads make it somewhat possible to tell a longer story, but it's still less cohesive than it would be anywhere else.
It's short and context free, which means it's only for soundbites, which is why it's popular with politicians and trolls.
Nobody uses it to coordinate anything, they just use it to announce stuff or just to shout. That's all it's good for.
I'd agree that this is one of its functions - albeit an emergent one, in that the "elites" probably didn't anticipate it going this way.
Its also an amplifier for outrage, from the personal level ("look how bad this sandwich is") to the political (organised, structured disinformation). And its also an addictive scratching-post for certain groups (mainly journalists and pols, but also narcissists like Trump and Musk and Ye). And probably other things too.
Reddit, HN and other online commentary platforms where contributions get "scored" are thoroughly deserving of an honorable mention when it comes to fostering groupthink.
Most people would not use these platforms if they knew the true extent of how the platforms disadvantage people who are not deemed "elite". It would also reduce the ad revenue the platforms make from unknown people seeking to elevate their social status. Social sites are healthier and more fair, when all accounts have equal post visibility across the platform (which is usually the case when they start, but slowly declines as they mature).
The main conflict in social media is profit versus ethics... The platform costs a lot to develop, promote, and maintain... That is why these platforms often mislead users on their capabilities for social elevation. In reality, the platforms do nothing now in order to help users to be visible to new audiences of people... It is mostly users creating controversy, using bots, faking celebrity, or paying to promote themselves that increases their popularity on social platforms. There are reampant cases of accounts with mostly fake followers everywhere, the platforms do nothing to stop fakery because it only enhances their deceitful ideals that everyman can succeed on the platform. Reducing overhead for running the platform is a big key to ensuring that fairness can be upheld... Cloud hosting cost is increasing at wild rates... It's crazy how that is happening when technology costs generally decrease over time for infrastructure...
And also citing how most host infrastructure now is trending
towards being 100% virtual.
Creating a better social site means constant vigilance to assure fairness and equality, keeping the community smaller or thoughtfully segmented and more focused around individual topics, genres, or niches and creating channels for each of those that let users subscribe and unsub...
It pretty much boils down to something similar to Reddit I guess, but better though out... Without all the management corruption, bad UI, and oversimplified/overapplied moderation and spam/mod bots.
It is hard to maintain a huge site like Twitter with all the potential for liability, a new system of accountability for user accounts needs to be developed, while still maintaining a proper degree of anonymity... There are also rules like COPA and others that create huge complexities, but maintaining account anonymity kind of helps that, because e.g. - if the platform does not ask for a user's name and age in any way, there is no record of that user's real name and age stored on the platform... Unlike a site like Facebook, that catalogues every aspect of a user's personal ID and activity.
Twitter is the most valuable database in the world because it mimics human conversation better than any other tech company. This is priceless for training AI with the goal of AGI. Once you extrapolate that, it makes more sense. It’s literally the hive.
We probably are simulated from the Twitter in the Other universe.
I'd say reddit is a far more robust archive of conversational data. Tweets are engineered to be entertaining or informative in small bits, typically designed for maximal impact and/or clout.
Sure, reddit has a karma system that incentivizes cleverness, but it's also designed for longer form conversation in a way Twitter can't possibly replicate. The pseudonymity also encourages vulnerability and openness in a way Twitter typically doens't.
There's a reason Google/Meta/Others train their AIs with reddit conversational data.
>but it's also designed for longer form conversation in a way Twitter can't possibly replicate
Reddit sucks at long form conversation. Every thread is stale and gone within 24 hours, so long lived conversations are basically impossible. Thus every topic that comes up is a rehash of the same super basic high level points over and over and over and over and over again.
Reddit does response notification, something that HN does not. If someone responds to a comment of yours, you get a site-specific 'orangered' email that has a quick reply box underneath it.
Different countries have different networks of power.
I suggest you google 'networks of power', which is the academic term as far as I know.
English countries like UK and USA are shaped around 'clubs'.
You can only join one if you're appointed
Japan has a set of corporation leaders who exchange informations, who came from families.
And some countries like France are being weird.
There, your social status isn't decided that much by your family, but by which college alumni you belong to.
As an engineer, for example, you hit a glass ceiling if you don't come from a few specific schools that have a network.
Join Paris X to be in the board of a large company. Join The Mines to be a well paid engineer in these large companies. And graduate from the INSA to still be an engineer, but the proletarian kind in consulting firms, which is ironically not so bad to continue build a network.
You can't even really apply to phd either when you graduate, as you're recommended by your school researchers to other coworkers, as gifts of goodwill.
The most ridiculous is the standard to be a high ranking politicians like presidents, ministers, or CEOs.
In the 20 years before 2017, they used not only have studied at the same school, the ENA, but where mostly from the same prom : 1978-1980, the (in)famous Promotion Voltaire. News articles about them are all over, but in French, because the topic interested journalists at some point. They were giving each others formal orders of merit, and they are retiring and being replaced by the Senghor prom, from 2004.
So in various contexts, 'elite' is a club you can't join because of who you are at a specific moment in time, and not just skills. It makes decisions about you, and you can't influence them.
This reliance on networks is why I don't like current social media like LinkedIn or Twitter. It just emphasizes networks, instead of allowing everyone to join and publish. And I don't like 'federated' social media either, because they're the same. I feel like even mainstream media like radio or TV allow a better blend of news, made by journalists, who can invite whoever has something interesting to say.
So for me it's an open question ! I didn't like Twitter, and I don't know what I would prefer.
Maybe I would like one of these projects that aimed to build a platform for local citizens.
Let's check out what they do in Taiwan, the digital democracy.
> andard to be a high ranking politicians like presidents, ministers, or CEOs. In the 20 years before 2017, they used not only have studied at the same school, the ENA, but where mostly from the same prom : 1978-1980, the (in)famous Promotion Voltaire.
For context, the ÉNA was a civil service school, i.e. it was for French civil service what West point is for the US Army.
The elite is the part of society who either through happenstance or personality are in the center of it fulfilling are coordinating role. This does mean that they have an outsize influence on society and also are at risk of becoming out of touch with the periphery. This fuels anti elite sentiment. At the same time because everyone talking to everyone doesn't scale we can't do without an elite. Also many members of the elite do have genuinely excellent qualities. This fuels pro elite sentiment. Because many people want to only consider either the pro or anti side of it there is a lot of confused discussion about the elite.
I think rather than dragging a HN thread off topic it may be beneficial for you to read about the topics - both the HN post and the idea of elites as it pertains to your question. Sorry to be a killjoy.
This. "Elites" is a motte-and-bailey term[0]. If you ask what it means, you'll hear all kinds of reasonable definitions like self-reinforcing networks of people, created by happenstance (e.g. everyone graduating the same prestige college the same year) and thus inaccessible to randos like you and me, that end up ruling things. Etc. But then the way the term is actually used by the anti-elite crowd, is mostly to mean "anyone with a reasonable argument I want to disagree with anyway, but who has qualifications or credentials that make them hard to be dismissed outright".
To answer your question, since the other replies are being disingenuous, it's a dog whistle for groups including 'liberals', left wingers, and - historically - Jewish people. This is why the OP comment makes the unsubstantiated claim that it's a method of coordinating an in-group's thought - as though agreeing with a left-wing bias Twitter is because of brainwashing and propaganda.
It's unsubstantiated because it's easily proven wrong. Twitter was home to Trump's presidential campaign. It's home to groups like ISIS, the Western output of the Kremlin, of the CCP, of Bolsonaro. Of Musk.
There is a point to be made about the changing role of Twitter. In my mind it is for some definition of 'elites' - but for expressing their views to their followers, not for coordinating. Sad that this opportunity to discuss such has been co-opted by conspiratorial rhetoric.
> it's a dog whistle for groups including 'liberals', left wingers, and - historically - Jewish people
Well not necessarily. In some contexts that may be how it is used - I've heard GOP hardliners in the US using it this way. But for example the "elite" in the UK would largely refer to the right-leaning upper-class who attended "public schools" (note: discussed on HN previously, public school == very fancy, expensive, exclusive private schools) and Oxbridge, and who stumble into well-paid careers in finance and politics. I wouldn't say religion is a big part of it - both Jacob Rees-Mogg (Catholic) and Rishi Sunak (Hindu) would be considered members of the "elite", but their religious beliefs are orthogonal to their place on the class hierarchy.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has publicly claimed to be (as a member of the not elite) fighting Rishi Sunak whom he brands a member of the "Elite" (+ WEF member and socialist).
In the context talked about in the OP, an elite are a group of people that have a larger/an ousized amount of power in a specific social context. So yes, business leaders, high-ranking politicians and very wealthy people are generally part of the elite in our society. Note that a 'social context' can be society at large, but also much smaller, the board of a HOA can form an elite in a small town for example. That social context can also be quite complicated: Trump famously was never really a part of the NYC wealthy elite, despite being a wealthy New Yorker, because he didn't fit in socially.
Elite can also mean a person or group of people that is better at something than others, there's some obvious overlap with the definition above, but it is less useful in the context of political elites, which we are mostly talking about in the context of Twitter.
The President of the US / any country on earth is an "Elite". Despite many claiming to fight against the Elites.
> Trump famously was never really a part of the NYC wealthy elite
However, he clearly was part of the NYC wealthy elite. His towers would get planning permission, politicians lobbied on his behalf, he was in Whos Who, he was invited to the Met Gala every year.
It's not a "social network" anymore. I mean, it is in the technical sense - you and I can both sign up for an account. But what it is today is an elite coordination mechanism, and Twitter became this because it was the first of it's kind and some sort of momentum or technological inertia put us where we're at. Journalists, politicians, business people, elites more generally etc. all use this thing to coordinate what they think about basically everything.
So you're really asking "how do I create another semi-public elite coordination system that could step in if Twitter falls apart".