I Hope Twitter Goes Away

https://alexgaynor.net/2014/oct/30/i-hope-twitter-goes-away/

by mwcampbell • 12 years ago

395 236 12 years ago

alexgaynor.net

kylec2• 12 years ago

For someone that supposedly quit Twitter months ago, there are a surprising number of recent tweets:

https://twitter.com/Alex_Gaynor

Not to mention the big Twitter logo linking to his profile at the top of his blog.

wonderyak• 12 years ago

Maybe he just wants to engage with #Brands.

untog• 12 years ago

Well, all his Twitter account is doing is tweeting out links to his blog posts. It's a glorified RSS feed, not what he's talking about the post.

But still, yeah.

kylec2• 12 years ago

Not all his posts are links to his blog:

https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/524683684180271106

But even if they were, there's a certain irony to decrying Twitter while syndicating yourself on it.

cr3ative• 12 years ago

Wait, is this satire? His Twitter account is linked in the header, and it just posted about this article. He claims to want to encourage conversations, but comments are disabled. What is this?

Flavius• 12 years ago

His blog comments were probably just like Twitter conversations: impossible to follow and appearing in an inconsistent order. Thus they had to go away. Also the jokes. Stop broadcasting jokes!

tux3• 12 years ago

He claims to want to encourage conversations

He certainly does not want to encourage conversation.

Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities;

It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does. That's not a community, that's an echo chamber with no disagreeing, no joking, no comments.

It's okay if he doesn't like Twitter and doesn't want to use it, but wishing for it to go away makes me uncomfortable. Why should he care if others use Twitter ? I, for one, am happy with Twitter being alive even though I don't use it.

jsmthrowaway• 12 years ago

It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does.

It's interesting that you say that, given that this is the same person who started a firestorm of drama by pull requesting gendered documentation in Node.js.

forgottenpass2• 12 years ago

It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does.

You say "seems," but it doesn't just seem like that, it is exactly that. The terminology he uses is "safe space." It doesn't mean zero joking or disagreement, but only the type and levels he approves of (minor point, but I'll clarify because I don't want conversation to degrade to pedantics).

Why should he care if others use Twitter ?

If I had to jump into speculation, I'd say he cares because he feels excluded from a tool many of the rest of us can choose to ignore or live with.

72deluxe2• 12 years ago

Perhaps the fact that he wants such a thing is a joke? Or a comment on the person himself?

The irony.

Disruptive_Dave• 12 years ago

And his Twitter feed is nothing but promotional one-way blasts (not to mention his tweet-followers-following numbers are consistent with shady accounts).

masklinn• 12 years ago

not to mention his tweet-followers-following numbers are consistent with shady accounts

A ratio of 20:1 is consistent with sole individuals having some contextual visiblity within an ecosystem/community, e.g. being a lead developer on a language's primary alternative implementation, which he is (pypy). It's similar to David Nolen (Om, 20:1) or Armin Ronacher (Flask, 40:1).

morganvachon3• 12 years ago

He claims to want to encourage conversations, but comments are disabled.

That bothered me as well, especially his flippant attitude about it ("Comments are never going to happen. Stop trying to make comments happen"). I get the joke, it's from that Lindsay Lohan movie. But the cognitive dissonance that it creates is annoying.

He's basically saying "I want Twitter to die because they don't allow proper conversations to take place. Oh and by the way, don't bother commenting on my post because I don't believe in blog post conversations."

Kalium3• 12 years ago

Between the two, I can only conclude that he has something very, very specific in mind as the proper form a community should assume. I wonder what it is.

abhididdigi2• 12 years ago

He says though, you can email him, write your own email blog, except that you don't comment on his blog.

Does that mean he doesn't want communication to happen?

bcj• 12 years ago

More likely, Alex does not want to spend the time to provide moderation for a comments section. His stance is that Twitter is bad because the kind of community it creates—it would be silly for him to create a comment section that similarly failed to meet his expectations.

It is perfectly fine for Alex to criticize Twitter without providing his own alternative (though he does tacitly recommend using IRC and Facebook instead). Alex is a Rackspace employee who also is heavily involved in the Python community. The expectations on him for providing a space to talk are completely different than a company who's business is providing a communications platform.

lnanek22• 12 years ago

The article is all about how he doesn't want to communicate with people unless they are in his specifically selected group of people he thinks is OK. So allowing blog comments would probably let anyone communicate, which is what he dislikes about Twitter. So I see the blog comments being disabled as more in line with his philosophy, at least.

LukeB_UK• 12 years ago

So Facebook groups/google+ communities?

serve_yay4• 12 years ago

It says send him an email. Maybe you think he's imposing undue restrictions on the conversation, but I don't think it's fair to say someone doesn't want a conversation because they would prefer to have it in one medium over the other. Plus comments need to be moderated, etc.

Are you actually engaging with his comments regarding Twitter or just whipping out a lame tu quoque?

vacri• 12 years ago

The author probably created the header when he was a twitter user, and hasn't gotten around to reformatting it yet. No great conspiracy.

jshevek10• 12 years ago

I had similar thoughts. Thank you for transforming my confusion and annoyance to laughter.

ben0x5392• 12 years ago

His Twitter account is linked in the header, and it just posted about this article.

Some people link their social media presences together so that posts made in one place get replicated on various socia media things, for the benefit of people who follow them on those social media things. That doesn't mean they have to enjoy that particular social media whatsit's experience, or can't criticize it.

The only thing that you can tell from comments being disabled is that he doesn't want to have this specific conversation on the specific venue that is comments to his blog post. Trying to extrapolate that into some stance of I HATE HAVING CONVERSATIONS is stupid.

sigmar• 12 years ago

He isn't just criticizing it. He is saying it shouldn't exist.

It is hypocritical to use it and exclaim that it shouldn't be used.

tempodox2• 12 years ago

Looks like classic trolling clickbait to me.

negativeview2• 12 years ago

Eh. I'm definitely a part of several communities on Twitter. It's just that they're micro-communities that are fluid in size and shape. If I'm talking business stuff I'll @shazow usually. If it's coding, usually @wolever, sometimes @shazow or @lnxprgr3, depending on the language/platform/etc.

The whole hashtag thing is ... pretty hit or miss. I wouldn't mind a better solution to that. But as weak as it is, it's how I found some of my closest twitter-friends, so it can definitely work.

Thankfully I haven't had to deal with any harassment issues (not famous, nor a noticeable minority), though sadly I don't doubt that they exist to some degree.

And just to be snippy, I find it amusing that he's so against comments on blogs, preferring that you write your own blog post. Isn't that exactly like Twitter? Everyone has their own medium, none of which are explicitly connected...

Tombone5• 12 years ago

It's not at all exactly like twitter, for one a text that needs to stand on its own (a blog post) will require far more work to be of any sort of quality than a simple reply on twitter.

negativeview2• 12 years ago

Okay, I'll get more explicit.

I think Twitter is defined by the fact that it's about broadcast.

Writing on a blog with comments off is 100% broadcast with no built-in solution for conversations to form. Twitter has a (flawed) way, so twitter is actually LESS about broadcast than this blog.

Communities are, above all else, defined by membership, the ability for people to identify as a part of one, and to participate in activities, and share things and experiences with the group.

How does a reader proclaim membership in this blog. Sign up for comments? Post comments? Nope. How does a reader participate? How does a reader share their experiences with the group? Far easier on Twitter than here.

Every user floats by themselves, interacting with who they please.

Every reader of the blog floats by themselves, interacting with nobody.

Try following a multi-party conversation using any of the official clients;

How is THIS possible on the blog? You can email the author, sure, but you aren't going to see or be able to reply to anyone else that emailed him.

There's also the widely-repeated quote of "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." Length is not necessarily indicative of amount of thought.

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

atjoslin• 12 years ago

Disagree. Twitter is immensely valuable for me to quickly communicate with people in my "community" (the Javascript tech world), as well as keep up on news in areas I'm interested in: the Javascript tech world & a few others.

freebs• 12 years ago

He also clearly doesn't understand how to use lists to create his own communities. I have lists for devs, friends, funnies, etc. With a little effort you can have these communities on tap in columns. Hey, if you're lazy, you can even subscribe to other's lists and put them in a column too.

Twitter is not hard for conversation, so long as you can put together concise thoughts. I'll agree it does become a pain when you need to explain a lot, but that's why we have links and a multitude of platforms to record our thoughts.

GI_Josh2• 12 years ago

I don't necessarily agree that Twitter users can't build communities. A friend of mine writes for a sports blog specific to an NFL team. His twitter account (and @replies) show that he is a part of a very strong community around the team. The tweets from these super-fans aren't just missives shouted into space, these people use Twitter almost solely as a response tool to each other. Their tweets look very much like something you'd see on IRC or a message board.

schoen4• 12 years ago

I guess another way of phrasing the original article's claim is that although communities do form, they have no straightforward way to exclude strangers, interlopers, and even griefers: and except for incessant use of hashtags (which could eat up valuable space), there's no simple way for a person who is part of multiple communities to direct comments to only one community.

That's a recipe for both serendipity and uncomfortable moments (or worse) if someone has strong opinions on, say, computer science, religion, and animal rights. People who chose to follow them over one thing will constantly see their opinions on other things. That might be great under some circumstances because it will promote more interesting and broader discussions or lead people to learn about ideas that they wouldn't have naturally come across in their own filter bubble. But it might produce some serious disruption in the conversation too, especially if that person's views are offensive or upsetting to some readers.

I know a Twitter user writes a lot about computer science and a lot about sex and sexuality. I find both sets of posts frequently insightful, but the latter would be off-topic in a forum devoted only to computer science, and they do sometimes produce offense.

It seems like the best case for avoiding really bad forms of conflict is when a group of people tweet almost exclusively on a single topic that outsiders don't find upsetting or offensive (or simply don't know about). But a lot of people do want to have at least some discussions that others will inevitably be offended by, and the broadcast medium can be a challenge for that if you didn't want to get into it with the strangers (or for that matter have some of them insult you, threaten you, or even dox you).

schoen4• 12 years ago

An example: I remember a blog written by an Orthodox Jew on theology and also cultural and political issues within the Orthodox community.

Periodically commenters would come by who would take exception to gender relations in the Orthodox world, or to the idea that there is a God who created the world and revealed his will to the Jewish people, who are uniquely continuing to follow it. The author would ban these commenters. His theory was that people are entitled to debate those topics somewhere, but that he wanted to have productive discussions on his blog with people who shared his basic premises.

It's easy for me see two different points of view about this: that it creates a "filter bubble" of the sort described by Eli Pariser, where the Orthodox (and people with other beliefs, for that matter, in their own blog communities) never see their faith questioned, and have a subjective experience that their beliefs are "normal" and don't hear about the substance of criticisms or objections to them. Or that it actually allows discussions about the topics that the audience of that blog mainly wants to discuss, without having every single thread turn into a debate about the existence of God, whether the Torah is divine, and whether Orthodoxy should adopt gender egalitarianism.

I think one idea here is that Twitter only makes one of these two options practical: the one where every thread can conceivably go off in the direction of a bunch of strangers saying that your basic beliefs are wrong (or even that you are a bad person).

djloche• 12 years ago

Twitter has a great feature of showing you the @reply messages by the people you follow, only if you follow that same person as well.

For example, if you sent me an @reply message to me ( @djloche ) that message would only show up in the feeds of your followers IF they followed me as well. This means you can have a conversation about the latest film with me, the party last night with your co-workers, and a pancake recipe with a friend that really loves pancakes - and there won't be any cross conversation unless there is a natural crossover in the social groups.

GI_Josh2• 12 years ago

That's a good point, that is clearer to what the article is trying to say.

Defining a community by its ability to exclude is interesting. Twitter just puts the impetus to exclude on a personal level (person A blocks person B) rather than on a community level (person B is banned from this IRC channel)

hvs2• 12 years ago

I agree. The hockey and baseball Twittersphere is awash in conversations. I've made a number of real-life friends through Twitter in these communities.

jpindar2• 12 years ago

Sports is perhaps a special case in that people routinely disagree with each other without one being right and one being wrong. Trash talking is expected and is easily ignored (or it can be part of the fun).

jonstokes• 12 years ago

I totally agree with this guy. At least, I mostly do. I'm not sure if I care if it goes away, but I've drastically cut back on my use of it mainly for the reasons he outlines. I think he's onto something.

vonklaus• 12 years ago

I am not a huge twitter fan. I watched the http://foundation.bz/ interview with Biz Stone, and he seems like he has integrity. I think some of the management of twitter is a bit dubious, but the core function of the application is rather valuable. It is a good way to keep track of people & events. It makes it easy to broadcast things like occupy, arabspring, ebola, charities, entrepreneurs, etc. It is a good way for people to collectively contribute ideas such as news. It isn't really meant to be a social network. What the author purports to be a bug, is actually like the key usecase/feature of twitter. I don't regularly use it, and am pretty ambivalent, but I understand the value.

AYBABTME• 12 years ago

Alright, so twitter is terrible because its 'broadcast' instead of 'communities', and you don't like 'broadcast' but you like 'communities', so twitter should go away.

   a) "I hope Twitter genuinely ceases to be."
   b) "I want a product that enables me to build and participate 
   in communities[...]."

Having a product that enables b) doesn't mean a) must happen. Why come to that conclusion. Because you don't like participating in it, it should cease to be?

I don't get how people come to conclusions like this. It feels very self absorbed to conclude a) from b). Maybe I'm just allergic to opinion pieces with hyperbolic titles.

baddox5• 12 years ago

I suspect a) is more a response to his perception that Twitter is unique in the large amount of harassment it hosts.

smacktoward4• 12 years ago

I don't want to speak for the author, but an argument could be made that a product that:

1) Is massively popular; and

2) Has design flaws that actively sabotage conversation

... could lead to a situation where "B would be better if A went away," due to network effects. No matter how good an alternative B you build, people will keep on suffering with A despite its limitations, because that's where all the other people are. The existence of A sucks away oxygen that B needs to grow.

Eiriksmal• 12 years ago

Exactly. Shotgun-blast your puerile thoughts to your dozens/hundreds/millions of followers. Don't bother reading any responses it might garner—they're going to be just as base.

Now you're in the habit of just shotgunning statements into the crowd, so when you do the same thing on Facebook, you've forgotten how to engage in a more lengthy, rational discussion.

Or, even worse, you've grown up with Twitter and don't understand that people can have lengthy, meaningful conversations via the internet.

penprog4• 12 years ago

Twitter doesn't have a design flaw, it sets out to do what it wants and it does so spectacularly. Twitter is a platform for announcements not for conversations (although many try to use it for that very thing).

People who think twitter is a conversation platform are #doingitwrong. Period. People who try to use twitter for conversations and get angry when it doesn't work well or some random stranger barges in and starts hurting their feelings obviously need to realize that there are a ton of other platforms that solve their problem. Namely message boards, any form of chat (irc, IM, etc), blogs, etc.

mikeryan• 12 years ago

Has design flaws that actively sabotage conversation

I've never thought of Twitter as a platform about having a conversation. Its a strange mix of a soapbox and some messaging but its inherently a public medium with the ability to have a public conversations but thats not its focus, its why brands love it, but its not Snapchat/Facebook or Google+.

baddox5• 12 years ago

That's a bit like saying "I wish cell phone B would go away, because I prefer cell phone A, and if cell phone A was the only one people could buy, it would be cheaper for me to buy because of economies of scale."

mirsadm• 12 years ago

Twitter doesn't need to go away. I feel I'm not missing out on much by not using Twitter. Facebook is sort of forced upon me because I'd miss on a bunch of social activities if I didn't use it. With Twitter it exists and sometimes I use it. My life is not negatively impacted by avoiding it.

coldtea7• 12 years ago

Having a product that enables b) doesn't mean a) must happen. Why come to that conclusion. Because you don't like participating in it, it should cease to be? I don't get how people come to conclusions like this. It feels very self absorbed to conclude a) from b). Maybe I'm just allergic to opinion pieces with hyperbolic titles.

No, it's simply that you ignore the fact that he didn't state his opinion as a conclusion in the form: (b) -> (a), nor he claimed (b)->(a) is some kind of deduction by itself.

He just stated (a) and (b), which are independent thoughts. The link, if any, is his belief that social networks who don't work with communities are inherently bad (thus (a)).

Why they are bad? That's what he provides his arguments about in the whole f... article.

_pmf_• 12 years ago

The article is shallow and points out the obvious characteristics of Twitter. It's a waste of time to read.

jgalt212• 12 years ago

I like Twitter precisely because it's a broadcasting mechanism. I choose to follow people/organizations that are smarter or more in the know than me.

I never directly communicate with people on Twitter.

TrainedMonkey• 12 years ago

This too will pass.

jusuchin• 12 years ago

Completely disagree... what a selfish post.

penprog4• 12 years ago

How about if you want a safe place you don't go to unsafe places? It's that simple. You can choose what you read.

jshevek10• 12 years ago

But then you might accidentally find yourself in an unsafe space one day. Its better to convert enough people to your opinions about safe spaces, and eventually force the world to conform to your vision.

cheshire137• 12 years ago

Man, this dude's crotchety. "Stop liking things I don't like!"

serve_yay4• 12 years ago

And twitter users doing their part in turn by getting upset someone doesn't like what they like ;)

mrweasel2• 12 years ago

I can't disagree with you, even if I really want to. I'm the same way, I want people to stop using Twitter, because I don't want to use it. I went to dotgo this month, much of the last minute communication was on Twitter, which is a really annoying platform to navigate when you don't have an account. I want to get other people of the platforms that I don't use, so I'm not forced to deal with them myself.

Being push towards technologies, behaviors and trends you don't like can be extremely frustrating. In the end me being bitter about Twitter, JavaScript, smartphones, tablets and all the other stuff I really don't care about isn't going to change public opinion. I comfort myself in the fact that Twitter will be dead soon if they continue to lose money.

eclipxe2• 12 years ago

me being bitter about Twitter, JavaScript, smartphones, tablets and all the other stuff I really don't care about

Can you elaborate why you are bitter about the above?

jordanpg• 12 years ago

I suspect Mr Gaynor is tapping into a simmering feeling that many have that Twitter is inadequate for most communication needs (at least among technical crowds), and that there are now many, many more interesting alternatives now. He clearly cares a lot about his #Brand and being the among first person to say how uncool Twitter or FB or MySpace is becoming might very well boost his Klout score.

I agree that Twitter is inadequate for serious communications and is the last place I go to read deeply on anything, but that doesn't mean it's not immensely useful and fun to many others outside my communities. I don't usually find myself hoping that things I don't use "cease to be". I think Gaynor must just be addressing his own social circles here and speaking hyperbolically.

notastartup• 12 years ago

His wish might just come true. Investors are also wary of twitter and it's ability to monetize. The huge userbase alone won't work forever.

The end game for twitter will look in the shape and form of a buyout at a huge discount by an already hugely profitable company.

mbesto• 12 years ago

Slightly side topic - does anyone else feel like they "need" to use Twitter because it's a good distribution platform (the "human RSS"), but generally don't particularly enjoy it?

I personally find myself thinking "oh maybe I should post that stupid comment that's in my head on Twitter...last time I did it I got X followers, so I should probably continue to do it"

baby• 12 years ago

yup. I'm worse than the author here, I've never understood twitter. It's bad for writing because of the limitation, it's bad to keep track of something because of all the noise, it's bad for discussions, it's bad for communities, etc...

The only good things that I can come up with are: broadcasting, stalking someone, press 2.0.

And yes I do use it, I have a twitter account with 600+ followers (I don't even know if they're called followers) and I just use it to promote and promote, and I dislike it so much that I miss on a lot of promotion by ignoring it most of the time.

mcantelon2• 12 years ago

it's bad for communities

I'd say it's good for sharing intel within communities, just not for in-depth discussion (other sites are good for that).

diydsp• 12 years ago

Twitter is an example of product design by technical limitations, not what people need.

Nevertheless, they hit very well, b/c the two were somewhat closely aligned for a decade or so. Now that it's being strained, some of its limitations are showing...

...But no matter what, I do not predict its imminent demise... Especially since they are mainly a technical layer, there is still a world of protocols they can implement on top of it to make it more like e.g. IRC, or whatever other comm. network people desire.

Then again CB radio rose and fell quite hard without ever completely going away.

smacktoward4• 12 years ago

If you want a more detailed critique of Twitter's design and the effect it has on conversations there, I wrote one last year: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/

/end self-promotion

fuzzywalrus• 12 years ago

I agree, this is more of an eloquent critique. Also this reads as "this is why I don't like twitter" instead of "stop liking things I don't".

api• 12 years ago

That's what I like about Twitter-- it's a global cocktail party. People tweet to one another about anything regardless of whether they know each other or what their relative socioeconomic background is.

It is what it is. It's not for everyone. But the net is more interesting with it than without it.

firstaccount• 12 years ago

The communities of twitter are #hashtags.

gdulli• 12 years ago

It's kind of ridiculous and solipsistic to declare that something that exists for a purpose you don't care about shouldn't exist at all. I prefer Twitter to other social networks and haven't had any problems with it. (Though Twitter should improve the situation for people who do get harassed. You can't eliminate all anonymity on the internet.)

I'm also not interested in the shallow/faux "communities" that are more easily facilitated by Facebook but I have no problem with allowing it to exist and I can't imagine censoring it as a whole due to the parts I don't like. Or even writing up a blog post about doing so.

kefka• 12 years ago

I'm another person who doesn't use Twitter, however I do have an account. And frankly, I fail to see many use cases. But I also acknowledge that the few use cases are powerful.

     1. On the ground reporting
     2. Messages to group of friends, like where to meet
     3. Coordinating group efforts outside friends list in X social media
     4. Warnings related to specific area/time
     5. Error logs related to web services
     6. Command/Control of hidden machines
     7. Complaints to companies with sensitive web presence

vhost-• 12 years ago

About seven months ago, I abruptly quit Twitter. Though I'd been thinking about it for a while, ultimately leaving was a snap decision for me. Lately I've been reflecting on why I hate Twitter so much.

It took me a minute to figure out he never worked for Twitter and that he just quit _using_ Twitter.

todayiscrown• 12 years ago

I'm confused. His opening says >>> About seven months ago, I abruptly quit Twitter. And this is his twitter >>> http://imgur.com/xAyW4h1

Last I checked oct 21st's not "seven months ago"

What gives?

lnanek22• 12 years ago

Could just be automatic posting from his blogging clients.

ehosca• 12 years ago

weirdo

tptacek2• 12 years ago

I value communities too, but the open broadcast nature of Twitter is what I like about it: I can put a message out into the either ("sector-level FDE encryption is bad!" or "ChiSec is next Wednesday") and it quickly percolates to people who (a) I'm glad saw it and (b) I would not have known to send it to. Lots of good things have come from that dynamic.

Twitter is full of abuse and harassment. Other communities are, too. One solution to that problem is policing, which is what HN does. Another is (for lack of a better term) cliquishness, which is what closed communities do. I see a lot of value in both of those approaches too, but every community management strategy has tradeoffs, and serendipity is an awfully powerful force to trade for orderliness.

_asummers• 12 years ago

OT, I didn't know about ChiSec, so thanks for that. I'm going to try and come to the next meetup.

tptacek2• 12 years ago

Neato. It's 2 weeks from now. http://sockpuppet.org/chisec.

We're going to put together something similar for HN-types.

programmarchy• 12 years ago

I always thought of twitter as a news filtering service. At least, that's how I use it. I follow people who tweet about things that I'm interested in. Journalism is about 'broadcast', not 'communities'. Should it go away, too?

mcantelon2• 12 years ago

It's fundamentally impossible to create a safe space with a public account

Right, so use something else for that.

Twitter grew because it's open. I interpret posts like this as an attempt to lobby for the creation of a caste within Twitter with the ability to censor. I've abandoned other large sites because of unreasonable censorship.

EDIT: Gaynor thinks people shouldn't use HN too. Quel surprise. https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/259803468838080512

throwaway5752• 12 years ago

Is this some kind of joke?

It has a Twitter icon on his website that links to his active Twitter account. On that account, 4 hours ago, he tweeted about this blog post (https://twitter.com/Alex_Gaynor, https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/527851651097309184)

bartwe• 12 years ago

I'm surprised at seeing no reference to reddit which does allow for participation and discussion.

jshevek10• 12 years ago

Reddit makes it much harder for you to completely shelter yourself from people who disagree with you (compared to, say, facebook). Some of the content of his post strongly suggests that he defines 'community' by his ability to block people he doesn't like or agree with.

_random_• 12 years ago

Plus all good names are taken and there is no strategy for recycling unused ones - simply embarrassing.

habosa• 12 years ago

Ok this may seem crazy, but check out Google+ again. It is a really nice mix of broadcast and communities (when you can find a good community). It won't replace your FB or your Twitter, but it seems to have a solution to this one niche.

It has the directed-edge-graph of Twitter and also really strong support for communities and pages. I know a lot of the developer communities on there are really strong (I work on Developer Relations at Google so I see it all the time).

lk145• 12 years ago

If discussions > broadcast then why disable comments?

jshevek10• 12 years ago

He doesn't want discussions with people he doesn't agree with.

programminggeek• 12 years ago

Twitter won't go away for say 50-100 years. Why? There is value in the name/idea in the public consciousness.

Let's not forget that myspace, friendster, and livejournal still exist. There are a lot of pre 2000 sites and brands that are still sort of a live in some kind of zombie state or another.

It's weird.

nullc• 12 years ago

Myspace has no impact on my life... Thats "close enough" to gone for my purposes, and I assume the author's as well.

I don't mine if there are people going around using tools that I don't care for, it's only when they're insanely popular beyond all cause do they exert social pressure on people who would prefer to not use them.

cloudwizard• 12 years ago

I am annoyed when people ask me for a twitter id to register. My twitter accounts are just for testing. I think there is a use for twitter as a generator for random number seeds

tg3• 12 years ago

Isn't blogging a form of "broadcast"? Twitter was a originally a "micro-blogging" service after all.

I don't necessarily disagree with his point about the levels of abuse on Twitter, but the medium with which he is expressing his message (his blog) seems to disprove his point.

Why do blog posts seem to be (mostly) free of these levels of abuse, while they're so rampant on Twitter?

serve_yay4• 12 years ago

I quit it about a month ago. But I seriously, seriously doubt it is going anywhere.

getdavidhiggins2• 12 years ago

    https://quitter.se/
    https://alpha.app.net/
    http://sublevel.net/
    https://cupcake.io/
    https://ello.co/

..the internet is made of choice

mrweasel2• 12 years ago

Which sort of fails if 99% pick something different from you, or you don't want to pick.

getdavidhiggins2• 12 years ago

I see what you're saying - but for the 1% that are influencers (who share and curate web content) - there is a strategy called POSSE http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere)

Basically a lot of people have their own independent rig, and then spam out the link to the silos, while at the same time, operating 5-7 social media accounts where they engage with the feedback on those silos (app.net/ello, etc)

We all know these 'web personalities' - the Grubers, Anil Dashes, Marcos, and even the Gaynors

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

This line stood out for me, "Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities; unless they do something so bad as to actually get banned from Twitter"

I've heard this several times from people with large followers, basically that they can't escape the bad actors without taking their account private. I don't think this is a Twitter issue so much as it is a everyone-on-the-network-has-the-same-volume issue. In the 'real' world, the relative population sizes of trolls vs non-trolls means that trolls get drowned out by the noise. But on the Internet everyone gets the same level of 'voice' and a minority can drown out the majority, especially if they are willing to be antisocial about it.

It is a hard problem. A naturally troll resistant but otherwise frictionless sharing platform. Maybe a voting button on every tweet, that is 'troll factor' (so +1 if they are a troll, -1 if they aren't) then use some data analytics to marginalize trolls. Seems like fertile ground for some fresh thinking.

Kalium3• 12 years ago

The catch is that once you introduce marginalization mechanisms, abuse is inevitable. What people often want is some kind of abuse-proof marginalize-only-the-people-I-don't-like button.

tbatterii• 12 years ago

ironically one of the reasons i've entertained the idea of quitting twitter is b/c of annoying things that showed up in my feed from the author(and others). But I just un-followed him instead. the technical things I'm interested in, but I dont care for the politics so much.

roymckenzie• 12 years ago

sanctimonious bloviating

He is criticizing Twitter for being something it isn't.

It's a shame this made it to the front page of ycombinator news.

ben336• 12 years ago

Twitter is the best real time news source I've ever seen. Any discussion of it's utility that ignores that is missing how a huge percentage of its users actually interact with it.

Yes its bad for conversations. Yes it is poor at building communities. But if you want to know whats happening in <insert area of interest here> Twitter can be a fantastic resource. Especially (but not exclusively) if your area of interest involves sports, tech, or politics.

vuldin2• 12 years ago

Ahh, real time news! Yes I think that is the one biggest positive feature of twitter. When I was trying to remember some positive things about Twitter to respond to this with, I failed to remember this one due to all the other not-as-positive things Twitter is used for.

prottmann• 12 years ago

And that things are?

waylandsmithers• 12 years ago

Well, they don't make any money, so...

no_future• 12 years ago

Why is everyone so into Twitter? I've never actually met someone who tweeted.

fogleman• 12 years ago

Step 1: disable your own Twitter account.

fat0wl• 12 years ago

haven't we always known that twitter is just an anechoic chamber to stick narcissists in?

i guess its alright for comedians/intellectuals to post amusing stuff (even then I find the tweet value to be inconsistent enough that its not worth scrolling through their history). outside that isnt it mainly a platform for egotists & social climbers to add to their self-importance?

i like it cuz it kinda tires them out, maybe stops them from taking to the streets to act like hot shit -- and i never have to look at it :)

naiyt• 12 years ago

haven't we always known that twitter is just an anechoic chamber to stick narcissists in?

That's an incredibly broad generalization of ~300 million users.

gojomo• 12 years ago

Conversations work on Twitter if the participants share enough context, such as similar vocabularies or compatible high-level goals.

Unfortunately the system and its harsh constraints is also really good at matching up people sure to misunderstand each other.

I suspect, though, that a lot of recent angst is transient, due to the inrush of users with wildly different rhetorical standards, and the exciting novelty, including the excitement of discord and performative moralizing.

But the novelty of nasty arguments with strangers will wear off – like how Farmville and similar games become less interesting when their basic mechanics and repetitive loops are understood. The true utility of Twitter will persist, leaving us with a better ratio of light-to-heat than some are experiencing at the moment.

golemotron• 12 years ago

Twitter has no mechanisms for this. Every user floats by themselves, interacting with who they please. This denies us the ability to build communities, to set social norms, and to enforce them. Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities

I read this and said "oh, he wants to censor people." Then, I got to the bottom of the post and saw that he doesn't allow comments either. It was a one, two punch.

hippowithgas• 12 years ago

I actually hope Twitter doesn't go away, it can serve as a fly-paper for the short-attention-span conversionist. The sort of people who talk at you, rather than with you. If they are all there, we can sneak off, to the other party, enjoy conversation, with give and take, learn, laugh, cry, take a real interest. It may even run to more than 140 chars. It will be great!

namank• 12 years ago

Broadcast has it's own use. I posit that broadcast leads to a more organic formation of a community since it ensures that communities are emergent rather than prescribed.

Thousands of communities come into being and dissolve on twitter every single day - what, really, is the hashtag?

People within an "idea proximity" (nearness of two ideas:)) commune about ideas with a gusto lost in other social sites. Twitter is one of the greatest communication gifts of this century.

squar1sm• 12 years ago

Yeah it's weird he still has a twitter account but I completely agree with him. Especially when I try to engage in a meaningful conversation. It's like excusing yourself from a loud party to talk to someone about something deep or complicated. Twitter is a party.

abhididdigi2• 12 years ago

Lots of Negativity here again. Most of the commenter here are saying it is wrong when he says Twitter should die because it doesn't encourage good communication, and then blocks his own comments section. It just means he wants to have a meaningful communication.

He says, you can email him, or write your own blog post to refute or add on to what he says. That way you will be facilitating a great communication.

adnzzzzZ• 12 years ago

It just means he wants to have a meaningful communication.

If you want to communicate you don't create barriers for it to happen. There's nothing inherent to comment systems that prevents people from writing meaningful comments.

jshevek10• 12 years ago

Yes, there is a lot of negativity here. Do you really think that its based on a misunderstanding of his post? Maybe the negativity is a result of people understanding his post, and having different - arguably better - values than he does.

gameshot911• 12 years ago

How to make Twitter go away: Stop talking about it, writing about it, using it, thinking about it.

How not to make Twitter go away: Write blog articles about how you want Twitter to go away, which are then shared and posted across the Internet.

freyr• 12 years ago

* then shared and posted across the Internet. *

On Twitter, specifically. He tweeted his article about not using Twitter.

Maybe he just wants people to engage with the @alex_gaynor #Brand.

spullara• 12 years ago

Just make your account protected.

paulannesley• 12 years ago

I completely disagree.

Twitter is good for two things: engaging with #Brands, and broadcasting messages to whoever wants to read them.

I almost never engage with brands on Twitter.

I do broadcast messages — to anybody who has chosen to follow me and hasn't chosen to unfollow me, both of which are freely done without any social consequences.

On the flip side, I read that which others have broadcast, provided I follow them. And I'm free to shape exactly who's in that set of people, without worrying about circles or unfriending or which IRC channels to sit in.

The author writes about communities, and about moderating IRC channels and making decisions about who can stay and who is banned. Perhaps he prefers to shape and steer communities in a way that Twitter doesn't facilitate.

Personally, the ephemeral and asymmetric nature of the Twitter social graph is the defining feature. The 140 character limit is perhaps just a constraint which helped that feature survive.

The author also mentioned harassment on Twitter. I've never been on the receiving end of it, and I hope I've never been on the other end either. But I believe it's a real problem. I hope there's a solution, but “Twitter going away” isn't that solution.

Emphaticdotco• 12 years ago

There's a Dutch saying that roughly translates to: "Life is a party but you've got to hang your own balloons." Twitter can be a fantastic place for community if you know where to look or are willing to organize it yourself. Tweetchats are a great example of this [1], the phenomenon known as "Black Twitter" [2] is another. (Although many ostensible members of "Black Twitter" have legitimate issues with how "it" is being studied and reported.)[3]

Not to mention the ad hoc communities that spring up around events and pop culture happenings. As with many other things, it might just be a matter of what one makes it.

[1]http://janetfouts.com/how-to-participate-in-a-tweet-chat/ [2] http://www.annenberglab.com/projects/dsail-black-twitter-pro... [3]http://io9.com/what-happens-when-scientists-study-black-twit...

basher• 12 years ago

Why I agree with article

Emailed link to me from twitter redirected to http://imgur.com/uazq6A9 http://i.imgur.com/uazq6A9.jpg

Summary a big slot is dedicated to Westboro Baptists hate tweet.

This was labelled news. In what universe is it ok to have direct tweets from WBC promoted as news content. Free speech is one thing promoting hate speech is another - big fail twitter.

IvyMike• 12 years ago

"This hammer isn't a very good screwdriver."

metaphorm• 12 years ago

I don't think that was Gaynor's point. I think he was saying something more like "this hammer is so popular nobody is using screwdrivers anymore, but we still need screwdrivers."

hoggle2• 12 years ago

Twitter like Apple define themselves more by saying "No" then anything else and I love them for it.

arh68• 12 years ago

I acknowledge the irony of 'no comments' on this blog post but beneath that there is a point.

All communication is broadcast. What differs is how those broadcasts are released and revisited through time. Twitter emphasizes the recent, most piecemeal events. Not building upon previous works, just consuming content FIFO and shouting back into the ether. Noise.

An old blog post has more potential, more signal-to-noise, than an old tweet.

Wikipedia is an interesting result of [anonymous] editors broadcasting content towards each other in a very constructive manner. Some termites might just stack dirt, but others can use simple methods to construct complex creations.

enkitosh2• 12 years ago

I don't understand. You can build lists, I do and they are followed by other people. I have one list of Icelanders and I totally look at that list as a community of people.

Just take Snoop dogg's account for example, he has a massive amount of followers. Is this not the community of Snoop dogg fans? You can find other Snoop dogg fans and follow them and interact with them if they are doing something that you like.

I love how I can just go on twitter and there is @BettyFckinWhite going "You know who doesn't care that it's #NationalCatDay? Every cat."

and I go "hah, that's hilarious" and then I go do something else. I think social media that aims at being everything you need on one site is robbing to much of our time. Twitter keeps it snappy, yet I can interact as much as I want.

enkitosh2• 12 years ago

Wait. He has a link to his twitter account in the header of the blog. What is the last tweet? 9 hours ago, a link to this article. He hopes that twitter will go away yet he uses it constantly? I'm confused to say the least. I don't know what this man wants!

gurkendoktor2• 12 years ago

Of course you can use a service because it's too mainstream to avoid, and at the same time wish that it didn't exist. I've also signed up for Twitter because they stopped providing RSS feeds. That doesn't mean I wish them best.

Oblouk• 12 years ago

Twitters open API is very useful. Even if it doesn't allow you to get more than 1% of the tweets (without subscribing to firehouse and paying lots of $$$) it is very useful for many different projects of mine.

rantanplan• 12 years ago

Oh the irony!

I stopped using twitter mainly because of Alex and other similar figures in the python community.

I quickly found out that twitter(or maybe the social media in general) brings the worst in people. I was following people because of their status in the software community and I hoped that I might get informed about tech stuff directly "from the source".

Instead, what I got were stupid jokes, rallies against "hostile" people that used "he" instead of "she" (oh the horror!) and other political nonsense.

I put up with the brain farts of people I used to admire only for a few months. I then decided that twitter probably isn't for me.

krick• 12 years ago

I cannot understand why this thread seems to be so popular. I'm not sure if I ever heard of this Alex Gaynor before (although he seems to have some recognition, but not really much), this article explains to some degree why he hates twitter, not why twitter is harmful for the universe and as stated in the comments many times already there isn't much constructive critique in his reasoning. So, essentially it is simply "somebody wrote he doesn't like something" post and would be of interest only if this "somebody" is some really special person.

Can somebody explain?

philwelch• 12 years ago

Honestly, @RealTimeWWII and its companion and imitator accounts (like @GuadaBattle) are, to me, the main justification of Twitter as a platform. If I didn't follow those accounts (and I will probably stop in three years once they finish) I wouldn't have hardly any use for Twitter.

mkr-hn• 12 years ago

The author has obviously never seen furry Twitter. One of my favorite communities. Maybe it helps that most people make a fresh account for it. It's diverse, safe, full of conversation, and seems to make a lot of people happy.

kakakiki• 12 years ago

Twitter is definitely not for everyone. It is definitely not for me. I don't want it to go away. I see people, communities achieving a lot with it - it is a medium to get heard.

rpm33• 12 years ago

Twitter is an incredible medium for citizen journalism and news broadcasting in general. There is no doubt about that. It does have issues with tackling bots and fake profiles - something that it finds harder than other social networks like Facebook which have a better system in place for authenticating accounts. By subscribing to the right people on Twitter, my feed is highly curated to suit my interests. Their machine learning would only get better and I only wish they use the AI it to classify bots and other fake accounts to enhance user experience.

vuldin2• 12 years ago

Thanks for posting this, I have had the same unpopular opinion since Twitter first appeared. While I don't necessarily think that Twitter should go away, I do think it should get out of the way of other methods for communication. There are much better forms of communication for many circumstances where communication is needed. Which is damn near everything aside from communicating with marketers and expressing witty one-liners to the world.

EDIT: I forgot about one great thing about twitter that I normally don't think about (since all the other uses cloud this function for me): real-time news. There's not many tools out there that can handle this type of functionality better. Reddit serves the same purpose for many people and does so in an even better way in my opinion (no character limit, communities focused on a topic, etc.).

puredemo• 12 years ago

Says the guy with nearly 38k tweets.

casebash• 12 years ago

I hate Twitter as well. It is occupying a place that could very easily be occupied by much better products. It's primary purpose is to hold back innovation.

I'm sure some people prefer Twitter as it is and it is valid for them to do so. However, the existence of Twitter is still massively harmful in terms of opportunity cost.

72deluxe2• 12 years ago

I am not sure on your conclusions. I do not use Twitter (I have an account, only scammers and spammers follow me, I say nothing interesting on it) but if there could be much better products, they'd take the position of Twitter, wouldn't they?

Twitter's primary purpose is to allow shouting in the street, not to hold back innovation. How is Twitter's existence stopping you from innovating?

drawkbox• 12 years ago

Twitter still rules the real-time news/information area. Communities like facebook/irc/forums are too closed for broadcasts like that. It has its purpose and it does it well. But you can also not use products you don't like.

I suspect some Twitter hate as he spent time very close to it in working there. This is expected, you work on a product you might see more of the bad than the good. Game developers don't always enjoy the game because they see what they had to cut, directors can't watch a movie without pointing out flaws, security forces can't walk into a building without checking for safety, or you worked at Olive Garden and might never want that ever, ever again.

When you work in it, you really get to know something, for better or worse.

toyg• 12 years ago

Alex Gaynor can be a bit of a troll. This time he wrote a blog post about things he (allegedly) doesn't like about Twitter, added a couple of "flammable" statements here and there to clickbait, and meanwhile he still has a Twitter account.

It's not the first time he acts like this, regardless of his technical contributions. This is why I don't follow him and will keep discounting everything he says, sorry; he goes in the same bucket as Dave Winer and Eric Raymond, people who can code but whose overall opinions I really don't care for.

galfarragem• 12 years ago

I hope twitter doesn't go away.

I was a very late adopter of Twitter because I always thought that Twitter and Facebook were the same. They are not. Twitter is slowly replacing my RSS and news reader. Twitter is not a community thing, it's about broadcasting (in real-time, if you need it, most people don't, they are just addicted). I don't tweet and I'm just following 11 people. I don't follow friends, I just follow who has something to broadcast. Twitter is great for that.

Facebook is more noisy by concept. Their focus in communities and friends makes broadcasting side noisy. I had to turn off almost all my friends wall notifications, I don't have the time or will to read that one friend that I meet once a year went to the restaurant or played a game. It's just too much noise. That's why FB for me is nowadays mostly a chat/email friends app. FB is great for that once most people are there. (Not to be confused with: FB is great doing that..)

start123• 12 years ago

Twitter was never meant to be a social network. The author himself writes: "Twitter is good for two things: engaging with #Brands, and broadcasting messages", which is what Twitter is good at - a broadcast and a news consumption service. I don't see any other service that tracks realtime events as good as Twitter.

Avalaxy• 12 years ago

Twitter is awesome! It's so easy to use Twitter to connect with people you usually can't connect with because you have no way of reaching them.

I use twitter a lot to find clients, support (e.g. I need someone from Google or Microsoft to help me with an issue), and much more. It's also a great way for me to gather news and updates. I follow the account of most of the tech I work with so I'm always up-to-date with their latest updates.

edraferi• 12 years ago

I agree that this is Twitter's best feature. It's very easy to find and reach out to almost any person or organization.

It's easier than looking up a phone number, because you don't need to search through piles of "contact us" pages. It's also lighter and less cumbersome than email.

I just wish it was easier to send private messages. Often I don't want my customer support communications to be massively public.

vittore• 12 years ago

I think some people will quit fb/twitter the same way they quit smoking or drinking. Hi there, I am recovering twiterian

davemel37• 12 years ago

By this authors definition, a community's primary function is to exclude others. While you are free to exclude whoever you want in your own life, it says something about you when you have a problem with others wanting to include the rest of the world.

Whether you or anyone else likes it or not, we are in a time where we need to learn to adapt and include, not hide and exclude.

freehunter• 12 years ago

I don't want to talk to everyone, or listen to everyone. That's a simple fact of life, almost everyone can agree to that. I don't want to make an inside joke to the world, I only want my social group to hear it. The world might be confused or not find the joke funny, but my group would. Likewise, I don't want to see someone else's life displayed in front of me, because frankly I don't care about that other person.

Life is too short to try to pretend to be interested in uninteresting people.

conradfr• 12 years ago

I dislike Twitter because so many people try to be clever, or think everything roaming through their mind is of interest to the world, and sadly because of retweets you can't 100% avoid them.

But what I hate the most is useless articles filled with random twitter posts. It's the new and lazier street interview and it's as stupid as those "X number of people started a petition / created a facebook group about [random outrage of the day]".

Twitter is OK to know when something is down, or when your favorite artist has a new album but it has weakened journalism.

cenhyperion• 12 years ago

How is this not a false dichotomy? The author presents it as "We can either have IRC communities and Facebook groups where everyone agrees with each other all the time or gets banned or we can have an uncontrolled twitter where people might disagree with me in ways I can't control" Both have existed very comfortably for a significant amount of time.

I think (along with hundreds of millions of other users) that there's a lot of value behind a broadcast platform like twitter, and I've made some really important connections on it. It seems arrogant to dismiss that because it doesn't enable the exact types of communication the author wants to have (that are addressed by the other platforms he explicitly mentions).

This is a clickbait article headline for the author's blog to get more attention, if he felt this strongly about communities, conversations, and against twitter he wouldn't disable comments, and tweet about the article.

"This screwdriver is so bad at putting nails in the wall!! We should get rid of screwdrivers!"

dheera• 12 years ago

Weibo (the Chinese "clone" of Twitter) actually does a lot better job with conversations. It has its own built-in instant messenger, as well as a comment dialogue interface similar to what you see on Facebook. Also, you can add your own text to the top when you retweet.

Nevertheless, though, I don't agree with the author's stance of "I hope Twitter goes away". If you don't like something, don't use it. Let the market decide what should exist, let hackers keep building better products, and let the market decide again.

jpindar2• 12 years ago

Drinks from firehose. Complains about getting wet.

nimaMehanian3• 12 years ago

You make excellent points. Twitter IS for broadcasting. It is the counterpart to community interaction. Say, you want to reach those who aren't in your community. That would be difficult on Facebook. In fact, it's a "uniquely defining feature" of Facebook not to facilitate that sort of usage. They both have a purpose. Say, a startup needs to communicate app status to its users so people aren't left hanging in mystery during a downtime. Twitter would help with that well.

Maybe Twitter IS inherently less warm and more chaotic. I get that feeling too. (I don't even log-in often.) But I sort of use it to create a pseudo-community.

Here me out.

140 characters are limiting, right? That means that the author of a post has two options: risk losing followers by posting chatter, OR make sure each word matters so that it's a saturated snap-shot of their current thought.

Now, imagine that you follow a curated list of influencers (i.e., people that are involved-in and doing things you also are passionate about). THEY may not all know about each other, but YOU know about all them. (Think: one-to-many instead of many-to-many.) As a consequence of this, you're continually getting an influx of musings by people you respect and value the opinions of.

nimaMehanian3• 12 years ago

Hear

Reply

I Hope Twitter Goes Away

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