It’s been nearly a year since Elon Musk bought and started ruining Twitter. Since then, I’ve been on Mastodon and Bluesky, and I’ve started watching a bunch of RSS feeds I relied on in the days before Twitter.
But it’s not the same as it had been. I’m not sure if that’s because people are dispersed across different platforms, or because people are tired of social media, or if people are just tired.
I remember being at PyCons in previous years where the Twitter commentary was energetic and prolific. At times, you could solve the problems of choosing a talk by being in one room, but watching the Twitter commentary about others at the same time. Hynek Schlawack talked about being drawn to conferences based on the excited tweets from attendees.
I was excited to give a keynote at PyCon this year, and I looked forward to checking afterwards to see what people took from it, what they quoted, what jokes landed well, and so on. When I looked, there was almost nothing.
I understand the problems with moving from one social medium to another. Some people just won’t bother. Mastodon is too nerdy. Bluesky is still invite-only. Threads is tainted with the Facebook brand.
Interestingly, 18 months before the Twitter mess, an eerily similar thing happened to the Freenode IRC network: Goodbye Freenode. A crazy “free speech” moron with too much money decided to buy the whole thing to “fix” it, and ended up driving everyone away. Although a clear alternative was quickly available (Libera IRC), a large number of people just didn’t make the switch.
Now it looks like the same thing is happening with the Twitter world. There are too many alternatives for where to go, and it’s confusing to choose. When you try a new place, it feels like a ghost town. It’s lonely being an early adopter on a new social platform.
My wife had the same experience: she tried to find communities on Mastodon or Bluesky that could replicate the experience she’s had on Twitter: they aren’t there. Yet? Hard to say.
I would like for something to take Twitter’s place, but I’m not sure anything will.
Comments
Maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many of those that thought that musk was “a crazy “free speech” moron with too much money” that was going to ruin Twitter, left, ruining it for people thinking alike.
But I don’t think that is the only reason we don’t see people talking about Pycon anymore. I suspect the problem is the Pycon ambience itself: it has become corporate, stale, restrictive, and boring.
Your keynote was AMAZING, and the one from Guido was good but the rest of the keynotes… it was like the director speech before a big event in high school: Two managers pitching their companies, two DEI speakers self-congratulating themselves, a researcher that didn’t care about the language, and the Executive Director that only cares about politics…. maybe those who left Twitter felt exited and eager to write about that, but not me.
@Juan-Pablo, this seems like a really harsh judgement. I didn’t find PyCon this year to be stale compared to previous years, and I missed a number of them, so if there has been a trend, it would have seemed a stark comparison to me.
Maybe I am out of touch with the typical experience, and others will chime in.
I stuck around on Twitter for a while, but it really is that bad and continues to decline. I tried Mastodon, including Fosstodon, but it’s not that compelling (sorry). I have a Threads account, but I can’t see myself being active there because of the FB taint.
Bluesky is the best of the Twitter clones IMO and seems to be growing steadily. I’d say it has the best chance of supplanting Twitter. I have a few invite codes I’d be happy to share with Python people or anyone I can verify isn’t a troll.
Feel free to share the anon email address I posted this with.
Have you tried Mastodon now that full-text search has launched and the interaction model has been redone? It’s a lot better imo (though I may be biased here)
Not sure why free speech is a problem, even when some whack job makes outlandish statements. You can block them if you’re offended or realize you have no time for their comments - the equivalent of walking away in the physical world.
If you’re concerned about the hoi polloi that are susceptible to crazy ideas that they need to be protected from, then that might be a problem in and of itself.
If people left because the Twitter overlords that allowed for gov’t directed censorship were let go then I’d say those people are concerned about the validity of their beliefs.
Trying to understand why anyone would not find “The answer to hate speech is more speech.” a valid argument. We are not talking about yelling “fire” in a theater here or “I see a bomb” in a mall (even though nobody goes there anymore either).
@Jeff: “not sure why free speech is a problem” Every community has a tone. Musk seems determined to influence the tone of the Twitter community, in a direction I don’t like. This is the true equivalent of walking away in the physical world: walking away in the virtual world.
You seem to have not liked how the previous people were running Twitter. I don’t like how the current people are running it.
Additionally, I don’t have faith in Twitter’s business model. Ad revenue is declining rapidly, and Musk seems determined to (somehow) turn it into a financial application(!?) It doesn’t bode well for the future of the platform. I’d rather put my energies elsewhere.
Can’t speak for everyone, but at least people around are moving to Telegram. This might sounds surprising to people who don’t use Telegram, but it has a amazing feature called “Channels” (https://telegram.org/tour/channels)
With Channels, you can post anything, forward other people’s post from their channels, let people comment, basically everything you need for social media. And if you use bot to combine multiple channels into a timeline, the experience is very close to Twitter (without ads 😀).
Ofc, coldstart a community on Telegram is hard. I guess it’s easier for those communities who already use it.
Oh, did I mention I found this article from a Telegram channel
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