Social Media

Noah Smith has a post on how Twitter and Social Media has liberated us by becoming less important. I have to disagree with Noah.

First off, any argument that makes the case that the "cool kids" no longer just toss off one-liner Tweets is a bad argument. The moral standing of "cool kid" experts has been a dumpster fire for a while now. No fault of Twitter or Social Media at all.

Next I would disagree that Twitter is in decline. When Elon Musk rate-limited users (verified accounts could read up to 6,000 Tweets a day while unverified accounts could read up to 600) - I did not see any degradation what so-ever. Perhaps it is just that I'm not Social Media or Twitter addicted or that I have a life. Perhaps because I thought Musk's stance on Free Speech was worth supporting and am a verified account - those 6,000 Tweets per day were plenty (maybe a reason to fork over that $8 per month - remember if a service is free that you're the product).

Finally, I would not be using Mark Zuckerberg's Threads of any evidence supporting my argument, You cannot be on Threads unless you're already on Instagram and just attaching things to a popular platform is the quickest way to ruin that platform. I'm tempted to see if Noah Smith was also arguing that Meta was the next big thing because that clearly was a huge misplay by Zuckerberg too.