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Is another Twitter post okay? People are panicking about Twitter and Elon Musk's actions so far.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/10/elon-musk-twitter-disastrous-weekend/671942/
I'm someone who has never loved Twitter and I am dismayed at how it influences media and national discourse. It seems to foster a special brand of toxicity and bring out the worst impulses and tendencies of online interaction. My question is, what if the best case scenario happens and it totally implodes? Imagine - advertisers leave, users sunset their accounts, the thing just turns into a ghost town. Do you think national discourse changes for the better? What platform do all those frustrated users move to and will that platform just turn into another Twitter? Is there an equivalent platform at all? Will media outlets actually have to start reporting on meaningful content rather than the latest Twitter dust-up? Those high-profile personalities who suck all the oxygen out of the room, will people simply stop paying attention to them without a platform?
The "Math twitter" people I follow are either cloning their tweets to a Mastodon account or moving to Mastodon entirely. I don't think it'll supplant Twitter, but it might.
The free-speech-fan in me loves the idea of this genre of network application becoming mostly decentralized/federated. The schadenfreude-fan in me can't wait to see the cognitive dissonance when the "I can't use a system that won't censor other people enough" crowd realize how badly they have failed to solve that problem. The SpaceX fan in me is worried over how far Twitter's value might crash and how badly Musk might have trashed his future ability to raise investment for more important causes.
Math...Twitter?
Agreed on all points, though. Especially regarding Musk, who doesn’t seem to be in a good position right now. Anything he does to Twitter will either damage his net worth or disappoint his more rabid fans. Or both. @greyenlightenment really wants to believe that reinstating Trump will recoup his investment; I don’t think it actually matters. Those who care about being on Twitter, by and large, already are, and yet it sucks.
The technologist in me also fears that adopting another tech specifically designed to allow filter bubbles might have some deleterious effects. Twitter is already full of islands; separating them further doesn’t seem beneficial for polarization.
Beats the hell out of normie Twitter! Posting on Twitter seems to make everybody lose 30 IQ points, so I think the tricks to making it useful are "follow people with 30 points to spare" and "never ever post yourself". That latter one doesn't really generalize, I know.
I only follow one edge of math twitter (though it blurs a bit into CS/AI/science/engineering clusters). I also get a lot of good stuff from their retweets and a little from "the algorithm", but I try not to add a new follow unless there's little to no chaff mixed in with the grain. If I have time to blow on filtering through a lot of dubious material myself to seek quality, well, that's what this place is for...
https://twitter.com/JohnDCook has a bunch of side accounts devoted to various subfields; I'm pretty sure he's tweeting at the same relative level about each, but I'm not at the same level in each so sometimes I get a reassuring "yes I understand obvious theorem is obvious", sometimes it's "wow that's so much clearer now" and sometimes "wait, really?"
https://twitter.com/CihanPostsThms is very eclectic but often very interesting and generally well-cited.
https://twitter.com/johncarlosbaez is one of the folks (I bet the others I'm thinking of were his correspondents) moving to Mastodon. It's a real shame; category theory is fascinating but triggers "isn't this too abstract to be useful" fears in me, so seeing the perspective of a master of the subject who's also a physicist was great.
Yeah, this is a bit of a disaster. But it's a disaster that's been with us all through human history (how much of a boost have religions gotten from the fact that historically >90% of people shared yours in your family and community even when only <10% of people shared it worldwide?) and I'd like to hope that the fact it's getting worse again is a bit of a blip. People can still easily seek out other perspectives now if they want to. I just wish I understood why more people don't want to, or why they don't at least feel a bit ashamed about that. I guess with normies I could imagine someone trying to be wise by worrying about whether mere exposure to evil use of skilled rhetoric could trick them, but you'd think PhD ideologues would be more confident in their ideological stability.
We could probably have a Math Motte thread, where the cream of Math Twitter gets reposted. Unless you think that would introduce an Eternal September.
I'd worry about lack of interest, but I might toss something in the Friday Fun thread and see.
In which direction? I would be surprised if there was enough cross-community interest for either community to swamp the other.
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TWTR peaked at $80, shorty after Trump was banned. Twitter stock went up 300%, from $20 when Trump was inaugurated, to $80 when he was finally suspended. Coincidence? Maybe but more engagement does not hurt. Sure, everyone already has a Twitter account, but having Trump active will mean more activity, more clicks, more ad views, etc.
Twitter went public in 2013. The presidency also saw countless corporate restructurings, acquisitions, and site redesigns. Shockingly, they even added features such as 280-character limits. These are confounding factors with no effect from Trump.
He probably boosted engagement relative to a Hillary or Jeb! candidacy. I don’t think that would replicate. The shock value has worn off, in part thanks to relentless media coverage of every POTUS tweet. The biggest legacy of his time on Twitter is that more people are jaded and think it’s a cesspit full of witches.
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