This post was inspired by Adam Conover’s video “Why We’re Still Trapped on Twitter”
I already spend a lot of my time on Twitter. Now, I know many people hate the platform already, and I can’t blame anyone. It can be a cesspool at times. But to me, who likes to stay away from the “political part” of the platform, its actually pretty ok.
Before I start trashing on the platform and Elon
If you’re a normal person, then you can skip this section.
However, if any of you “Elon worshipers” are reading this article, then I advise to press Ctrl + W and get the hell out of my website. You’re welcome to come after me too, here is my Twitter: Dev-Siri , go on, do it. I wanna see how many people still haven’t figured out life.
Super Apps
Well since Elon’s take over, the platform has kept getting worse. It can Mostly be blamed on the super app concept that Elon is pushing towards. Now look, I’m not saying super apps are necessarily bad. They can be convenient for some people, but not for me, neither for like 99.9% of the people in the world. Elon specifically said he wants “The WeChat for the west”, which is a concept that has already been tried many times in the past, and failed every single time. Lets be real here, WeChat is just a giant surveillance tool for the Chinese government. The rest of the world is much more open than that.
A super app, that can do banking, social media, live streaming, messaging, and more just sounds like a huge privacy concern. Why the hell would I want to use one app that provides a bunch of services (which when maintained by one company, can be worse than dedicated apps) when I can use apps that are focused on one service and are (usually) going to do a better job? I see no advantages of a super app, especially for an app that is international. For a country like China, where most foreign apps are banned, yeah, it makes sense. However, for an app with an international user base? Actual stupidity to go for such a concept.
Obsession with X
X is usually associated with negativity. But when used correctly, can look cool. Like SpaceX is actually a good name for a space exploration company. However, do you know what’s not a good name? X! Don’t even count the exclamation mark, just “X”. Especially for a social media company. Also, what would be an even more of a brain-dead move? Making the logo an unicode character that is impossible to trademark. Nobody would want that branding right? Well.. not Elon. So TECHNICALLY, Twitter doesn’t even exist anymore.
This has literally been the worst rebrand so far since the new coke back in the 1980s. To this day, every person I’ve met either doesn’t know Twitter has changed to X, or they don’t call it X. Because saying “Can you follow me on X?” is just straight up dumb. Like X, what? Usually “X” is a placeholder to say “Follow me on Twitter/Instagram” I don’t call it X, everyone I know doesn’t call it X. The only ones who do, are Elon simps, news reporters (Even they have to always add “formerly known as Twitter”) and Elon himself along with his 3-4 employees still left in his company. Seriously, I can’t get over this. How does one man love a single letter of an alphabet SO MUCH? Even if I try to, I can’t become THIS stupid.
Feature… Removals
So that was all just the start. We haven’t even gotten into the feature removals.
The most significant of them all were circles. Now, this feature was actually pretty recently added, just in October 2022, yet it was used by many. The removal of this one feature made many users lose their entire group on Twitter. I cannot understand how “this is a good change”. Just because you, Elon, don’t use something, doesn’t mean everyone does the same. A feature was once added, it has been used by many people, and now prematurely removing it is nothing but stupid.
Next up, is the block button, well, not a “removed feature”, but a highly endangered one. The block button is pretty much required by every social media to have sane users. Elon doesn’t see it that way and thinks that its just useless. He got the most attention when he announced its removal, and the attention was obvious to predict. A social media without a block button sounds like hell, its a basic safety feature. But enough pressure was put on him to prevent him from making the decision, and he left the block button alone. But this man’s crazy, who knows when he will start going after this one feature again.
Twitter has pretty much turned its feature additions/removals model to tailor to what Elon is feeling on that particular day. Though all of these features were actual “proper features” that were removed (or are endangered to be removed), the next one instead was not removed, but corrupted to hell.
Verifications
Verifications were the only way before to prove a person was legit. Again, Elon thought it wasn’t. So he rolled out Twitter Blue. And the result was utter chaos. Even after settling it for a few days, its over. The verification is no longer a badge that people flex about anymore nor is it a proper “legit” badge, its just a badge, thats pretty much it. The only thing it screams is “I paid $8 for ‘free’ speech”. Then after the chaos, suddenly Elon started verifying accounts that have over 1M followers. And that didn’t turn out to be a good idea, because of the new “This person paid for Twitter pfffffffffffff” meme. Many people claimed THEY DIDN’T PAY, and they were NOT happy with the verification. This just shows how much value this badge has seemingly lost. Now unless this subscription service gets halted, the badge ain’t worth any legitimacy.
Good job @elonmusk
SIMPS
If any of y’all Elon worshipers are still here, this section is dedicated to you. I don’t get Elon simps. Why do y’all act like he is some kind of hero when all he does is Tweet stolen memes and buy companies he can benefit from to steal the credit. Did you know Elon is NOT the founder/co-founder of Tesla, got kicked out of PayPal because he suggested to name that company X as well, and (As we all know) is actively destroying Twitter?
”But… he’s saving free speech and humanity”
WHAT “FREE SPEECH”? what are you SO PUMPED ABOUT? Converting a platform from a warzone to a warzone with hate speech isn’t called “saving free speech”. Also, its not “Free”, it costs $8 a month. Also, I see him trying to be transparent on the platform, but never have I seen him listening to the users. And no, him stepping down as the CEO and appointing the new CEO Linda Yaccarino after he lost in a Twitter poll doesn’t count, she is very Elon driven, so this brain chip guy still has his power on the entire platform.
And be honest with me, when was the last time you thought of “humanity” when you were Tweeting out a hot take? If you were thinking about humanity, then you wouldn’t even be on the internet.
Ending it
So what can be the alternatives?
Tbh, I don’t think Twitter can be replaced. Plenty of attempts have been seen especially after the Musk takeover. Let’s go over some of them.
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Mastodon — This platform is like the Linux of social media apps and a lot of people are already on here. The only problem is that, like Linux, no ordinary person uses this. Even I, a tech person, don’t have an account on this platform. For a platform to be accessible, it needs to appeal to every person no matter their tech savviness. On Mastodon, people just get stuck on choosing an instance, and that’s the reason most nerds are on the platform.
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BlueSky — Founded by the blue bird app man himself, Jack Dorsey. This app, is questionable. You literally CAN’T use it, unless you have friends (rare), and one of them has an invite that they didn’t already give to another person. Then, when you actually manage to enter the app, make sure to turn off the button that says to show nazis as well. But once you do that, theres NO ONE to talk to.
Update (2024): So BlueSky is now available to everyone, but I highly doubt how far it will grow since most people post on this platform once and forget it exists.
- Threads — Was the biggest competitor to Twitter. It was
builtstolen by Zark Muckerberg and it looked like a promising replacement for Twitter. It imported your friends from Instagram, so no searching like BlueSky + You didn’t need to be a nerd and know about servers and instances like Mastodon. But it was a competitor. After just a few days, most people literally just left, and went back to their e𝕏. Why? because its simple, Threads’s (just like Instagram’s) algorithm is meant to make advertisers happy, NOT PEOPLE. The hype quickly died down, and now the only thing people talk about on Threads, is that nobody is on Threads. I certainly know that I didn’t signup, because I don’t HAVE an Instagram, and nor am I going to make one. (I try to stay away from Zuck territory)
TL;DR: All the other apps suck replicating Twitter
Final Words
I am just here to see where this platform is headed. One thing thats a fact at this point is that its simply worse to use Twitter now than it was 2 years ago. I’ve literally never seen any person defend these changes, except the Elon simps, but they are not people so I am not counting them. The only real prediction I can make is that people will still be trapped on this platform for the next decade or so, and unless some other person buys the platform and fixes all Elon’s changes, it will continue getting worse.