Will their support stop being non-existent with this service or someone will still be in danger of having their account suspended for no, as seen in the monthly r/Twitter mega-threads, significant reason?
So wait, does this also come with all tracking disabled? That would be awesome. Are they trying to test the waters with regard to alternate monetization strategies, or this is simply a way to doubly monetize subscribed users, via the monthly fee _and_ their data?
Imagine paying $3 to a site that is largely driven by trolls, agitators, bad actors, foreign intelligence, ads, and corporate shills. Twitter and others add gasoline to every single sensitive issue in the countries that use it.
Imagine if you could filter all of that out and only see other paid subscriber content. That would get a rid of a lot of trolls and bots. Not all, but a LOT.
Now imagine a site that only gave you the comments you agreed with. And every time you were looking for something you only saw information you agreed with.
Anyone who pays for Twitter gets exactly what they deserve. Twitter isn't an enemy of the right or left, they're an enemy of humanity. Literally a machine that monetizes human suffering, and amplifies it to increase revenue.
Are you looking for a protocol or client? For protocol, ActivityPub works for my needs currently. For clients, there are some really good ones on F-Droid.
RSS. Look at https://www.overcomingbias.com/ as an example of a microblog. Tweeter’s main selling point is the lack of friction, but this is also why it’s so low quality.
I really don't see anyone but the power users being willing to pay. What's that TAM then? There are only around 250k verified users, you can probably use them as a proxy for power users, your pro customers. That doesn't seem very large. Though this only really would be counting power writers, not necessarily folks who consume but don't tweet.
The feature that looks interesting and could be useful depending on implementation is collections if they are easier to share and link to as well as organize. Tweets are hard to sort through and organize today, would be cool if they offer a way to do things like pin a collection of your top ranked tweets or favorited tweets, rather then the current mode of pinning only one tweet. I tried creating something to help with this but it's hard to get traction if it's not natively supported (had a few users), though that could also just be the very bare boned state of the site, gotta be embarrassed by your first version right :) http://tweetlights.com/
I just cannot see myself spending money on a site so full of hate. Everyone these days has a take on everything that, when condensed, is just so emotionally distilled that it twists me up after maybe 10 minutes of browsing.
This is the problem with a default-public-broadcast site that is entirely driven by the engagement metric of comments. It's like browsing Facebook but only reading public articles; no groups, no friend's cat photos. No default-friends-only.
One the one side I really miss the BB-style format where the thread with the newest comment was on top but on the other side discoverability of legitimately good content was a mess.
"Solving" this issue with automation will most likely just recreate the already existing engagement algorithms. Strict moderation and more importantly curation is probably the only way to make it work but who's going to pay for this at scale?
For me, the public-ness is what makes it compelling. IMO what it lacks is an HN/reddit-style downvote, that would immediately send the vile comments to oblivion. Then perhaps you could choose to only let users with positive karma reply etc. HN & Reddit does have some rude/know-it-all comments but I don't see much of the real nasty stuff.
I think this is good. Any free resource is bound to be abused and overrun with spam and trolls. If you have to pay to use it, a lot of this becomes disincentivised. Free to read, pay to post, it's perfect.
To all complaining that twitter is full of hate. Have you ever tried using twitter without the search feature, or clicking on hashtags? I'm following a lot of interesting people and I find the content fascinating.
The best way to improve it would be an optional UI that didn't show comments to posts.
Everyone time I read those, and I can't help it sometimes, I lose a little more faith in humanity.
The real rabbit hole is to click on a particularly pungent response's source. It's always some guy with tens per day rude bon mots to his favorite enemies.
I strongly recommend using any unofficial Twitter app. My experience significantly improved once I stopped seeing "liked" tweets from people I follow. I don't even understand what the point of that is, if they wanted to share those with their followers they'd retweet it
I follow a carefully curated list of people in my field but invariable hate gets on my feed. People slip and can't resist liking a tweet about a recent controversy, or giving their sociopolitical hot-take, and then you get exposed to it even when they tweet 99% of the time about math.
I agree the content can be absolutely invaluable and fascinating otherwise, but I just couldn't deal with the seeping toxicity in the end.
After ~220K tweets, and the feeling that Twitter manipulates the follows/retweets along ideological lines, I find it hard to care much about the service.
While a technically impressive site, @jack has long since stabbed any user loyalty in the heart.
I was more irritated that they took away the ability to let videos play with the app closed and then immediately brought it back as a premium feature. And the ads have gotten ridiculous. That wasn't a big deal until they completely changed their suggested video algorithm and now all I get is "top ten" and "you won't believe this". If someone links me a video, I might watch it. I don't access the website for any other reason anymore.
I don't like how they don't let users play videos on the background either. That's definitely a sign they want to cash in on people who use it as a Spotify alternative. But smartphones gave Google a chance to take control of things like that and ad block. They are a business first afterall, that's what they do. When Spotify came about, I found the idea of paying for music streaming to be ridiculous. But their artist recommendation algorithm I found to be really helpful.
I agree on the way YouTube handles their recommendations. It seems less focused on the users interests and more like one big tabloid of click holes.
I started using the site back in early 2006 when I was 11 years old. I grew up there, but like anything that becomes commercially successful, it's long out of touch with it's users.
The internet as a whole has become less community focused. I worry future generations won't realize it used to be a place without hypnotizing algorithms. That their used to be cool niche forums and blogs. But the web failed to standardize itself to be more organized. Instead we have 5 or 6 major "platforms" that everyone's boxed into.
I think they will still believe in freedom online. But I really do think they're becoming increasingly unaware of the mood controlling aspects of social media. Being born into something doesn't help.
Spotify made sense to me because I could pay $10/month and have all my music downloaded. That's a lot cheaper than what the data would have cost me to stream. I canceled my subscription after the third freaking time all my music got deleted off my phone for no apparent reason. Found out it had happened on my way to work, as usual, where I spent a 10 hour day putting 100's of identicle parts into boxes with nothing to keep my mind off my lovely mental state.
I think I kind of missed the beginning days of YouTube. I knew about it and would use it on occasion, but the internet wasn't fast enough and I much preferred newgrounds and albino black sheep to waiting for videos to buffer.
I'm worried about my nephews. They cannot put their tablets down. And it's not exactly education stuff either. We were eating lunch the other day to a video of peppa pig voiced over so that the characters were being mildy crude (butts, poop, etc), interspersed with random clips from all kinds of shows. I'm munching on french fries, watching bits and pieces, and all I could think was that I wasn't high enough for that kind of crap. It seriously looked like something you'd think was hilarious if you were on mushrooms.
I just try and remind myself that my parents were worried about the amount of time I was on the internet when that became a thing. When books started getting cheap and popular, the older folks worried that kids in those days were buried in their fiction and not taking notice of the world around them.
But when I was younger, I was digging through files and editing shit for my games and making things work, thinking how in tune with the nuts and bolts of technology the next generation would be. Now they're here and if the button for the app doesn't work when they touch it, they don't have any idea what to do.
It'll work out. I just don't know how yet. In the meantime, I'll watch them play minecraft and regale them with stories about what it was like when the beta came out when I was in college. Then I'll drag their little butts out of the house and teach them how to climb trees because neither of their parents did apparently.
I honestly couldn't come up with a less compelling set of paid features if I tried. I would love to see things like no ads/promoted tweets, premium API access for third-party devs, live timeline streaming (more like what Tweetdeck does [or did]), higher quality media, and the ability to always keep the reverse chronological timeline.
Isn't Twitter developing some new social media site that isn't so algorithmically echo chamber driven like all others? I could've sworn I read an article about it a few months ago but I can't find anything anymore.
Great. I subscribe to Reddit Premium to skip the ads, and I will be happy to do the same for Twitter. That said, I didn't notice specifically that there would be no ads, in which case ... nope.
Your money is yours to do with as you like, but I strongly encourage you to not give it to reddit. There are few large sites these days with as much raw contempt for their userbase, and that's saying something in 2021. Paying for reddit is like being in an abusive relationship. You deserve better.
Twitter is the closest thing to 1984's "Two Minutes Hate."
Wikipedia: "In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell, the Two Minutes Hate is the daily, public period during which members of the Outer Party of Oceania must watch a film depicting the enemies of the state, specifically Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers, to openly and loudly express hatred for them.
The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatreds towards politically expedient enemies: Goldstein and the enemy superstate of the moment. In re-directing the members' subconscious feelings away from the Party's government of Oceania, and towards non-existent external enemies, the Party minimises thoughtcrime and the consequent, subversive behaviours of thoughtcriminals."
And from the book itself: "The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp."
And you want me to freaking pay to be a part of this process? And you won't even take away the ads for a paying member?
Or as @maplecocaine succinctly put in tweet form: "Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it"[0].
There's a LOT to improve about the hate on Twitter. I also think that trolls and griefers who don't have an audience snuff themselves out. If paying can make a dent in that I'm interested.
I have three social media accounts: this one, one for Twitter which is fully blank, and one for micro.blog.
The only reason I even have the Twitter account is because sometimes people link to tweets and I got tired of not being able to see them. But not enough to make an account and actually use it.
I really enjoy micro.blog. I have...five people that I talk to regularly and maybe a few dozen that I follow. It’s been a great way to have a little social media circle without going crazy on Twitter or Reddit.
I actually do have a Facebook account. But it’s only so that you can use messenger which for some reason is the only messenger app that my brother will use.
68 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 47.4 ms ] threadNow imagine Facebook or google news.
I'd pay $30/mo for a good, FOSS, Federated Protocol to compete with T (and the others)
I have the engagement algorithm blues.
"Solving" this issue with automation will most likely just recreate the already existing engagement algorithms. Strict moderation and more importantly curation is probably the only way to make it work but who's going to pay for this at scale?
Everyone time I read those, and I can't help it sometimes, I lose a little more faith in humanity.
The real rabbit hole is to click on a particularly pungent response's source. It's always some guy with tens per day rude bon mots to his favorite enemies.
I agree the content can be absolutely invaluable and fascinating otherwise, but I just couldn't deal with the seeping toxicity in the end.
While a technically impressive site, @jack has long since stabbed any user loyalty in the heart.
Boy, a lot of people would probably jump at the chance to spend $3/month on cancel-insurance.
Hello, this is your personal twitter bot. This will not land well and will mostly like blow up in your face. Are you sure?
Or
Please blow in your Alcohol Sensor FIDO Key to continue posting for 99¢, 3.99 if you are drunk.
So if you pay them you'll get features you should already have, got it.
Twitter gets rid of features that in my, and I'm sure many others opinion should be given capabilities.
I agree on the way YouTube handles their recommendations. It seems less focused on the users interests and more like one big tabloid of click holes.
I started using the site back in early 2006 when I was 11 years old. I grew up there, but like anything that becomes commercially successful, it's long out of touch with it's users.
The internet as a whole has become less community focused. I worry future generations won't realize it used to be a place without hypnotizing algorithms. That their used to be cool niche forums and blogs. But the web failed to standardize itself to be more organized. Instead we have 5 or 6 major "platforms" that everyone's boxed into.
I think they will still believe in freedom online. But I really do think they're becoming increasingly unaware of the mood controlling aspects of social media. Being born into something doesn't help.
I think I kind of missed the beginning days of YouTube. I knew about it and would use it on occasion, but the internet wasn't fast enough and I much preferred newgrounds and albino black sheep to waiting for videos to buffer.
I'm worried about my nephews. They cannot put their tablets down. And it's not exactly education stuff either. We were eating lunch the other day to a video of peppa pig voiced over so that the characters were being mildy crude (butts, poop, etc), interspersed with random clips from all kinds of shows. I'm munching on french fries, watching bits and pieces, and all I could think was that I wasn't high enough for that kind of crap. It seriously looked like something you'd think was hilarious if you were on mushrooms.
I just try and remind myself that my parents were worried about the amount of time I was on the internet when that became a thing. When books started getting cheap and popular, the older folks worried that kids in those days were buried in their fiction and not taking notice of the world around them.
But when I was younger, I was digging through files and editing shit for my games and making things work, thinking how in tune with the nuts and bolts of technology the next generation would be. Now they're here and if the button for the app doesn't work when they touch it, they don't have any idea what to do.
It'll work out. I just don't know how yet. In the meantime, I'll watch them play minecraft and regale them with stories about what it was like when the beta came out when I was in college. Then I'll drag their little butts out of the house and teach them how to climb trees because neither of their parents did apparently.
"Whew, finally got my account back from those nutjobs! Imagine thinking you could make good money pumping crypto. Unless..."
Collections? No thanks.
Twitter has a smaller base than Insta or FB - but part of that base uses it professionally i.e. journalists etc..
I can't say these features are 'it', however, the opportunity for price discrimination has been there for a decade surely.
For a certain segment of users, $X is nothing, and probably can be expensed.
Wikipedia: "In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell, the Two Minutes Hate is the daily, public period during which members of the Outer Party of Oceania must watch a film depicting the enemies of the state, specifically Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers, to openly and loudly express hatred for them.
The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatreds towards politically expedient enemies: Goldstein and the enemy superstate of the moment. In re-directing the members' subconscious feelings away from the Party's government of Oceania, and towards non-existent external enemies, the Party minimises thoughtcrime and the consequent, subversive behaviours of thoughtcriminals."
And from the book itself: "The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp."
And you want me to freaking pay to be a part of this process? And you won't even take away the ads for a paying member?
There's a LOT to improve about the hate on Twitter. I also think that trolls and griefers who don't have an audience snuff themselves out. If paying can make a dent in that I'm interested.
[0]https://twitter.com/maplecocaine/status/1080665226410889217?...
The only reason I even have the Twitter account is because sometimes people link to tweets and I got tired of not being able to see them. But not enough to make an account and actually use it.
I really enjoy micro.blog. I have...five people that I talk to regularly and maybe a few dozen that I follow. It’s been a great way to have a little social media circle without going crazy on Twitter or Reddit.
I actually do have a Facebook account. But it’s only so that you can use messenger which for some reason is the only messenger app that my brother will use.