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. I know many people hate the platform already, and I can’t blame anyone. It can be a cesspool at times. To me though, who likes to stay away from the political part of the platform, it’s actually a pretty good medium to connect with people in your field.
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, I suggest you hit Ctrl + W and get the hell off my website. You’re welcome to come after me too, here is my Twitter: Dev-Siri . Go on, do it. I want to see how many people still haven’t figured out life.
To the rest of you, I can express my reasons on why I think Twitter is going downhill.
The Super App No One Asked For
Well since Elon’s take over, the platform has continued getting worse. It can mostly be blamed on the super app concept that Elon is pushing towards. I’m not saying that a super app is necessarily a bad concept on its own. It sometimes makes sense to use a super app over a dedicated one. However, this does not apply to an app that has been a social media platform since the begin of it’s existence, and 90% of the people in the world are not going to willingly switch to an app without some enforcement. You know, the enforcement that keeps super apps popular in China. In context with China, 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 to no one’s surprise, has 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.
Additionally, a super app that can do banking, social media, live streaming, messaging, and more just sounds like a huge privacy concern. Why would I ever want an app that provides a bunch of services, which is probably going to be sloppy in quality when maintained by one company compared to dedicated companies focusing on different uses. I’d rather use apps that are focused on one use and are excellent at it. 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, a super app makes sense. However, for an app with an international user base, it’s actual stupidity to go for such a concept and think you will actually succeed.
Obsession With 𝕏, His Personal Brand
The letter X is usually associated with negativity, but can look cool when used correctly. Like SpaceX is actually a really good name for a space exploration company. However, do you know what is not a good name? X! Don’t even count the punctuation, just ‘X’, especially for a social media company. To add to it, an even more brain-dead move would be making the logo an Unicode character that is impossible to trademark. All of these make it clear, it’s a branding no sensible person would want, except Elon of course! And with this one destructive change to the platform’s only valuable asset, it’s identity, Twitter technically doesn’t even exist anymore, neither does its value.
To this day, every person I’ve met either doesn’t know that Twitter has changed to X, or they just 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 I’ve seen do are Elon’s simps, news reporters who need to add “formerly known as Twitter” every single time, and Elon himself along with 3-4 employees still left in his company. Seriously, I can’t get over this. How can one man love a single letter of the alphabet SO MUCH? Even if I try to, I can’t fall to this level of stupidity.
Vibe Driven Feature Removals
Whatever I said till this point was just the start. I haven’t even gotten into the feature removals yet.
The most significant of the feature removals was Twitter Circles. This feature was actually pretty recently added, in October 2022, and it was used by many. The removal of this one feature made many users lose their entire group on Twitter. I can’t understand how this is a good change in any way. Just because you, Elon, don’t use a particular feature, doesn’t mean everyone doesn’t as well. A feature was once added, it got used by many people, and now prematurely removing it is nothing but a bad decision.
Coming to the block button, which is not a removed feature, but a highly endangered one. A block button is pretty much required by every social media to have sane users. Elon doesn’t see it that way and thinks that it’s just useless. He obviously got the most attention too when he announced its removal. A social media without a block button sounds like hell, it’s a basic safety feature. Though enough pressure was put on him to prevent him from making the decision, he still can’t leave the block button alone. This man is crazy, who knows when he will start going after this one feature again.
Twitter has pretty much turned its feature additions, and removals, to tailor to what Elon is feeling on that particular day. Though all of these features were proper features that were removed (Or are dangerously close to being removed), the next one was not removed, but instead corrupted to hell.
Verifications Are Just Blue Badges Now
Verifications were the only way to prove whether someone was a legit person of a notable position. But of course, Elon thought it wasn’t. So he rolled out Twitter Blue. And the result was utter chaos. People started buying checkmarks with just $8, posed as companies, and Tweeted stuff that was either offensive, or stuff that cost the company billions of dollars. Even after settling it after a few days, it was over. The verification system is no longer a badge that people flex about anymore, nor is it a meaningful badge anymore. Its just a badge, that’s pretty much it. The only thing it screams is “I paid $8 for ‘free’ speech”. Then out of nowhere, Elon started verifying accounts that had over 1 million followers. And that didn’t turn out to be a good idea, because of the new “This person paid for Twitter LMAO” meme. Many people claimed they didn’t pay, and they were NOT happy with the verification. It just goes to show how much value the badge has seemingly lost. Now unless this subscription service gets halted, the badge isn’t worth any legitimacy.
Good job @elonmusk
SIMPS
If any of you Elon worshipers are still here, this section is dedicated to you. I don’t get Elon simps. Why do you 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? Turning a platform from a warzone to a warzone with hate speech isn’t called “Saving free speech”. Also, it’s not free, it costs $8 a month.
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 Twitter.
Ending It
So What Can Be The Alternatives?
To be honest, I don’t think Twitter can be replaced. Plenty of attempts have been seen especially after the Musk takeover. Some of the most promising alternatives were:
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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, which creates an even less appealing community for the average person to join.
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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, you can actually manage to enter the app, but once you do that, there’s NO ONE to talk to.
Update (2024): So BlueSky is available to everyone now, but I highly doubt how far it will grow since most people post on this platform once and forget that it exists.
- Threads — It 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, and you didn’t need to be a nerd like on Mastodon to be welcomed into the majority. But it was a competitor. After just a few days, most people simply left, and went back to their e𝕏. The reason is 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 didn’t sign up for it, because I don’t have an Instagram, I might, but I don’t for now. (I try to stay away from Zuck territory)
TL;DR: All the other apps suck at replicating Twitter.
Final Words
I am just here to see where this platform is headed. One thing that’s a fact at this point is that it’s 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.