Ask HN: Do you believe there's really an alternative to Twitter?
Lots and lots of people leaving Twitter "for an alternative."
Personally I don't think there's any viable alternative to Twitter.
I think most people will do their rage quit and come back once they've cooled down and the news cycle has moved on.
But what do you think? Do you think there's any realistic alternative to Twitter as the world's "town square"?
Do you think any of the alternative platforms will actually take off and gain the critical mass of users along with the needed feature set to become a second or third Twitter?
101 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] threadI think Mastodon does 1 well, and doesn't do 2 much. I don't want 2. So it's almost a perfect platform once enough of the experts have a presence there.
Your question seems like asking for a different kind of sharp stick to poke your eyes out with. Alternatively don't poke your eyes at all.
Balancing what little value I ever got from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. -- all of which I have used, sometimes for years -- against the waste of time and anger and frustration, the trolls and sociopaths, the nonsense and lies, I decided not participating in those fake town squares and social clubs would reduce my stress and wasted time without any downside. And I don't have to worry about how my personal information or reading habits or social interactions get harvested, aggregated, sold, and ultimately used against me.
This… isn’t hard?
I was on Twitter for five years, LinkedIn since it started (quit two years ago), Facebook on and off for several years, Instagram for a while. I thought I would get useful information, job leads, and stay connected to my family and friends. Instead I got a lot of useless but seemingly urgent "news," endless spam and friend requests from people I don't know, and had to witness multiple fights about politics and religion and social issues that wouldn't have even started in person. I learned about bizarre conspiracy theories I wouldn't have known about, and got some strong opinions about things like gun ownership, gay and trans rights, and immigrants, but I can't say that any of that added to my life.
I have a friend who follows people like Sam Harris and tells me all the time what so-and-so expert had to say about some social or political issue. So what? How does what Sam Harris (or any "public intellectual" or "expert") thinks or says affect me, really? If I valued repeating what I read on Twitter to other people to make myself feel smarter or better-informed, or if I cared what Elon Musk had to say from his bathroom this morning, I would spend my time on social media I suppose.
My point was that this was entirely inside your control, and it is relatively easy to avoid these parts, thus, "as good as you make it" is a relatively reasonable statement to make.
It sounds like you didn't get what you were expecting. It is perfectly possible to use twitter without treating it as a "fake town square and social club" (albeit, a lot harder if you only interact with the web site and not a third party client). You don't have to look at, or participate in the drama. I've used twitter for 13 years, and probably only ever looked at the "trending" topic, three times? I only see people I follow, and if they retweet stuff that I don't want to see, then I turn off their retweets.
I almost never tweet, except to attempt to helpfully reply sometimes. I delete my tweets after a few hours.
It absolutely is what you make it.
By analogy I can control the real-life interactions I have with people to some degree, but not completely. I can choose not to engage with family members who spout conspiracy theories, just ignore them, or not put myself in the situation in the first place. But I can't always avoid that in real life because I can't always control those interactions. With social media, though, I can choose not to participate at all, based on weighing the value I might get against the downsides of time waste and nonsense I have to read, skip over, block, unfollow. In my experience with social media the downsides always far outweighed the benefits, and that was before taking into account the platforms harvesting and selling my information. If something important happens in the world, or some new tool or technology comes out that I might care about, I will find out through some other channel (here, for example) that doesn't come with so many downsides. Other people will have different experiences.
I mainly want to push back on the idea that we have to use social media to participate in some imaginary "global town square," or that we will miss something vitally important if we don't pay attention. We don't, and we won't.
You've completely pivoted away from the thing that you were originally disagreeing with. Nobody was saying this in this thread.
I freelance (programming and system admin) for a living. I had a customer earlier this year who wanted to screen me over a video call before committing to a project. He asked me for my LinkedIn and Facebook accounts so we could "connect." When I told him I don't use those platforms he expressed shock and asked how customers could find me if I don't use social media. I asked him "How did you find me?" Obviously not on LinkedIn or Facebook. In 15 years freelancing I never got a single professional lead through social media. I suppose some people find it suspicious when they run into someone who doesn't use social media -- what are we hiding? In any case I got the project and the customer communicated with me by email and phone.
As for freelance jobs, I can't imagine where I would even look without Linkedin. There are some local forums that have job postings but nothing useful for a freelancer in EU.
I can't say that what goes on in Washington has ever affected my life since the Nixon administration (ending the Vietnam war just before I reached draft age). Politics (at least in the US but I suspect in most places) long ago turned into mostly a series of pseudo-events, distractions intended to keep politicians and celebrities and "the elite" in the limelight, virtue signaling and "owning" the other side, while nothing that actually matters gets addressed.
Maybe I don't understand it or see the need because of my age. My kids all use social media, sometimes they get really upset about what goes on. They all grew up with the internet and social media, I date back to rotary phones and daily printed newspapers on the porch.
I stuck with LinkedIn for 12 years thinking it was a necessary and useful platform for "professionals." Never got anything out of it beyond recruiters contacting me about jobs that matched one keyword in my CV. I get work through an agency now, before that it was all word of mouth and referrals, and I still think that works better than trying to find work through online marketplaces and social media sites.
To bring it back around, I don't doubt that some people can get value from Twitter and other social media. I don't, but I don't project my experience on the rest of the world. My original comment in this thread intended to answer "I hate Twitter, what can I use instead?" Stop and ask what you expect to get out of Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn and then periodically check that you get that.
Thanks for the reasonable conversation. I only participate here on Hacker News anymore because most of the time I can find some interesting topics and the conversations usually stay civil and useful. HN can go into the weeds but I hold it out as an example of what good moderation and a respectful user base can create. I haven't found that anywhere else.
I am not saying that using Twitter is the way to escape this, but going to the park won't save you from it either. And even if you don't use it, it's important to know the impact of those platforms.
The biggest thing that ever happened on Twitter (which somehow contributed to Musk buying it) was Trump getting banned. That led to all kinds of earnest and serious-seeming "conversations" and "debates" about free speech and public squares and all that, but in the end what Trump tweeted all day long amounted to nonsense. Just like following what Kanye or the Kardashians do, it seems to mean something, it seems important, but think about it and all you have is spectacle and celebrity worship and gossip. Social media gives us a firehose of pseudo-events, spectacles that seem to mean something but don't. They occur only to get reported on and liked or repeated in the same social media sphere. Daniel Boorstin describes that phenomenon -- which predates social media -- in his book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Read that instead of Twitter or Facebook to learn how pointless and manipulative social media has become in our culture. That some people may find nuggets of value here or there in the dumpster fire doesn't make it a good thing.
Senior Democrats used the platform for years to create hoaxes about Russians helping Trump steal an election. No bans.
Then when Republicans do similar in response to an election with very dubious postal voting, those Republicans are banned. And for those claiming Trump incited violence - that’s a distortion of the truth. His last tweet on the platform was a smack down against rightwingers who’d been involved in political violence.
Trump never had a problem reaching his supporters. If anything the Twitter ban gave him even more free press and another phony grievance to rage about on Fox News and every other outlet.
Believe what you want. I didn’t comment to engage in political debates, or to defend Twitter. Don’t use it. It only has significance and power if we believe it does.
What kinds of trends or stories are you at at risk of missing out on?
This is why they're so over the top furious with Elon.
> I think most people will do their rage quit and come back once they've cooled down and the news cycle has moved on.
The whole news on this is itself fuelling outrage and extreme emotional reactions for many to 'quit' Twitter in rage on to alternatives without closing their Twitter accounts.
They will calm down, and move back onto Twitter after the outrage is over.
No comment on merits of alternatives or social media itself.
I'm really curious why you think so. On twitter you can read through the feeds of ~300 million monthly active users. You can read their opinions about current events, jokes, whatever thought popped into their head, etc.
So how many monthly active users would be needed in order to get approximately the same level of information/inspiration/entertainment?
E.g. Telegram has ~50 million MAU. Is that not enough? Is the range of opinions expressed by the 300 million so much bigger that you would be impoverished moving to a network that had only 50 million?
Perhaps if you have extremely esoteric tastes, like Baluchi newlywed cooking recipes, but for most views/interests, 50 million is more than enough. Really 10 million is more than enough. This is my version of Gates' Law: No one needs a social network with more than 10 million users, because no one is that unique in their outlook, temperament, knowledge, or life experience.
But if you need huge numbers, there is also Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, wechat, etc.
This reminds me of some conversations where a friend insisted that they needed to live in a big city, because they wouldn't be able to find anyone to relate to in a smaller city. And I thought, how many thousands of people need to live in a place before you can find a group to relate to? Do you really need, say, 5 million people in order to find some kindred spirits? 1 million wont do?
I moved off Facebook (many years ago) and deleted my account.
I moved off WhatsApp and deleted my account.
I moved off Instagram and deleted my account.
Life is better out here. Less rage, less FOMO, more reality.
I do not trust Elon to use my posting history responsibly, period. with so much pressure on monetization who knows what gets sold to which advertiser.
If the world just got better about actually letting you talk to the people you want/need to (like a senator actually reading letters from his/her constituents, or a company actually providing quality customer service), twitter would become rapidly obsolete. And for good reason.
Social media fills a niche that otherwise lays unfilled. But while something like facebook can act as a "town square", twitter literally just fills in for the laziness of other platforms.
What? I've been on Twitter a long time and this is just nonsense. It's about being able to speak to people.
> customer support for a company that has terrible phone lines
How is this "never have the status or prestige"? It's "don't have the time or energy to sit on hold for hours" at best.
In the US, at least, I think it’s fairly well-known that politicians or their staff will often read (and handle relevant actionable items) in letters from their constituents. Things like expressing opposition to some legislation or requesting their soft power for some bureaucratic situation (e.g. expediting a passport application) are quite standard. Especially if your constituency isn’t too large *, there’s often an individual response when necessary even if it’s through a staffer.
* Smaller than a million people or so? US Representatives and state/local legislators are a better choice in many cases.
The concept of a "global town square" is entirely at odds with everything we know about how humans work, and I don't believe any sort of algorithm or content moderation or anything of the sort can make such an incredibly infeasible concept workable.
The alternative to Twitter should be building local community. Start having fire pit nights. Welcome (limited) alcohol and some pipes or cigars, and simply start talking to people, face to face, again - and then keep doing it on a weekly basis or so. Expand as needed, and when it gets too big, start another firepit.
We need to stop intermediating all human interactions through tech companies that are simply mining this data to then manipulate us as we're most susceptible to (which is what advertising is, though plenty of other things also piggyback on the data to try to manipulate us).
And turn off cell phones around the fire pit. They're actively harmful in every possible way.
I know zero (0) people within a 5 mile radius[1]. And if you started a fire pit around here (local council estate)[2], alcohol or no, I can guarantee the police would need to be involved sooner rather than later.
[1] Exceptions: flat mate and one person who stays in London ~2 nights a week
[2] Also good luck trying to get a permit for that kind of thing.
That's exactly the problem to be solved by the suggestion above.
> [2] Also good luck trying to get a permit for that kind of thing.
It's a sad state of affairs when "oi bruv you go' a loicense for tha' firepi'?" is an actual concern.
In the absence of someone hosting it in their garden - and within 200yds radius of here, there's maybe 20 gardens, none big enough for a safe fire pit - it would need to be in the community space which is controlled.
> That's exactly the problem to be solved by the suggestion above.
Have you considered that I perhaps don't want to know any of the people within a 5 mile radius since I already have a community of people I talk to?
Have you considered that maybe it's in your best interests to at least be acquainted with people in your local community? Unless you're in rural America or something (hell, even then), that's a lot of people you seem to have written off rather prematurely.
Like, I can't tell you how to live your life, but if you're truly that detached from your local surroundings then that seems like a problem in and of itself - not just from the abstract perspective of mental well-being, mind you, but also the tangible/pragmatic perspective of being able to negotiate for necessary (let alone desired) goods and services within society.
Put simply: having friends close by is invaluable. I guess if you're rich enough you can pay strangers to provide everything you need, but having friends to call upon when you need help with something is a lot cheaper :)
Besides, it's possible (if not highly probable) that there are people within a 5 mile radius of you who are part of your existing remote community. Wouldn't it be useful to know who those people are and at least have the ability to collaborate with them in person if need be?
Yes. But in the last 4 years, I've heard the local community scream at their children, heard the local alcoholics shouting abuse at people walking past, seen the local shop attacked by a gang of kids 3 times, seen countless fireworks let off in the square and also aimed at people, seen the rubbish left behind after the community has used the square and park, and been kept up more nights than I can count by the noise.
I'm OK keeping my distance, thanks.
> also the tangible/pragmatic perspective of being able to negotiate for necessary (let alone desired) goods and services
We got a plumber recommended by and from the community to replace a shower. That kind of thing?
It took a couple of years and a few hundred pounds to get a stranger to fix what he messed up.
> Wouldn't it be useful to know who those people are
I'm reasonably sure I do know who those people are, yes. Perfectly happy to collaborate with them, if required, remotely.
What all these suggestions seem to be missing is that some people (and I don't think it's a tiny percentage, either) do not have the burning desire to mingle with people at fire pits, roof beers, park beers, etc. and that remote communities, enabled by things like Usenet, IRC, Twitter, Livejournal, what have you, are how they prefer to interact.
And for every one of those, there are likely dozens or even hundreds of people not doing those things and instead living quiet, productive lives. Those are the people you're prematurely writing off, and those are the people who would be of value to you.
> We got a plumber recommended by and from the community to replace a shower. That kind of thing?
No, because that would just be a different stranger. If you don't actually know anyone in your community, how do you even know your community recommended that plumber? In all likelihood there are countless other people in your 5 mile radius with the exact same experience who could've warned you about that plumber and recommended a different one (perhaps even the very one you ended up hiring later) - but instead, you wrote them off, and in doing so made a rather expensive decision.
In attempting to refute my point you've proven it :)
> What all these suggestions seem to be missing is that some people (and I don't think it's a tiny percentage, either) do not have the burning desire to mingle with people at fire pits, roof beers, park beers, etc.
None of these suggestions are predicated on a "burning desire", no more than a burning desire to perform some other chore like participation in electoral processes or working for a paycheck. I don't like mingling with people, either - I, too, would rather stay at home all day chatting with Internet people if I could get away with it - but the point is that we can't get away with it, because whether we like it or not we live in a society and it's therefore in our best interests to participate in it.
I was fed up of living in a place where there was no cultural cohesion, where people constantly came and left, where ghettos naturally formed because melting pots don’t work in practice.
I now live in a lovely town in Kent where I know and love my neighbours, where the streets are safe and clean. The air is clean. The roads aren’t all 20mph limited (FFS, Lewisham!) and people are generally happier, more polite and more settled. Some people will wince at how “white and middle class” the area is. But I have no chips on my shoulder about race or class, so this doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
Leave London. There are much nicer places to be in the U.K., whatever age you are.
Not sure what country you're from, but now they've been banned from public places in the UK, you'd be considered a weirdo for suggesting that.
Pipes and cigars are loathed. People hate smokers now, they're considered pariahs now.
Practically, the reason I suggest a bit of alcohol and some cigars/pipes is to have "something to do with your hands," and something to do if you don't want to be part of the conversation at the moment. Since these events are ideally cell phone free, if a chunk of the conversation isn't interesting, or isn't something you care to participate in at the time for whatever reason, being able to sit back and focus on the pipe or cigar for a bit is a nice option. I've certainly had moments when someone is expressing a point I disagree with, where the best option is to simply let them talk and occasionally ask clarifying questions - sitting back, sipping on some whiskey, and working on a cigar makes it far easier to let them continue without feeling the need to dive into why I think they're somewhat insane, and that's half the point here - I may not agree with them, but I would like to understand where they're coming from.
At this point, though, I'd view the actively countercultural aspects of a pipe/cigar as a benefit to them in your situation. But, also, seeing the UK-centric parts of the discussion here, I'm so glad I don't live over there. It sounds worse than I'd expected - 1984 was not intended to be a government handbook.
I'll rephrase a bit and hope the parent here agrees with me. That's not the point. If a fire pit and pipes are not your thing or not allowed by police or space, just do a beer gathering at your roof. A tea gathering at your place. Have a few beers on the park and offer them to people. Whatever you're comfortable (or maybe slightly uncomfortable) with, with the goal of finding a small group of people that are local.
They don't need to be your best friends. But speaking from experience, knowing local people helps. Especially if you're not from that place.
Hopefully the point is the same and this makes it easier for others to not get defensive, but open-minded and willing to try.
But it is? Simply just saying something isn't, doesn't make it so.
If I along with millions of others in 2022, can use Linux for all my needs and not touch the spyware that is Windows, Linux is as much of an alternative as iOS is to Android.
I think what you'd want to say is, Linux doesn't have as big of a marketshare as Windows, which is true but how does it not make Linux an alternative?
If millions of people can use Linux based Chromebooks and not think about Windows or MacOS, it is already a viable alternative. Maybe not for you, maybe not for someone else, but it is a real alternative whether you like the fact or not.
I think that sometimes when people say "X is/is not an alternative to Y", they're actually meaning "replacement". Such as the current "Is the Fediverse an alternative to Twitter?" Obviously, yes. Is it a replacement? Obviously, no, and it could never be since it doesn't implement a whole bunch of Twitter features!
Same with Linux - "Is Linux an alternative to Windows?" Yes. A replacement? Probably not but it would depend on what you're wanting to do, surely.
Elon, and possibly Trump before him, are the only people who actually reached the world on Twitter. For vast majority of people Twitter is a small, local (not necessarily geographically; it can be local to a belief, or an interest) platform, and they never break out of their small bit no matter how hard they try.
There isn't an alternative to Twitter in the sense of another platform that replicates everything Twitter does, but for any individual there are loads of ways of replicating the functionality of Twitter that you use.
When someone says they're leaving for an alternative they mean the second one.
The social network effects is just too powerful. Only a very few number of social media's broke through that and it's usually by being different from existing offerings.
Ie, tiktok with super algor feed that only shows 1 thing at a time. Fundamentally different from the rest.
It really does feel like one of the only places you can just speak without that speech being attached to another topic.
https://hliyan.medium.com/email-re-skinned-as-a-social-netwo...
Am I right in thinking that only allows communication between bi-directionally connected people (because you need someone's public key to send to them)? Because how would that work for, e.g., people with huge followings? Are they supposed to 'friend' everyone that wants to consume their output? (Which is one of the good things about Twitter - it allows uni-directional 'friend's.)
A more effective solution is to opt out.
What's not trivial are the scaling and moderation and support personnel to handle millions of users. And of course, building the user-base itself for those network effects. And those are the things that are currently being lost.
But the whole thing was never good. It was just what was there. So yes, there could certainly be a (much better) alternative, a blog network for instance, or just about any other social media site.
And the idea of it as "the world's town square" is just laughable to anyone that isn't a long-term twit addict. It's never been that, and never would be.
The alternatives would depend upon what you’re trying to get from the platform, but they would include anything from other social media (for the more fun use cases) to traditional news websites (following political events) to HN/newsletters (tech news) to whatever else. Or just keep using it since the product matters more than the owner.