Lotta talk about replacing Twitter.
The better dialogue is how to get people to re-evaluate how they engage with the internet.
Personally, I'm convinced of two things:
- You can't 1:1 replace Twitter unless it's a similar top-down walled garden.
- Most people probably shouldn't want a Twitter replacement, since Twitter is bad for us.
Instead of finding/molding/creating a replacement, we should encourage people (and ourselves!) to focus on what they like most about internet interaction.
Re: "Twitter is bad for us"
Most people only know to engage with the internet via the primary monoliths; Facebook, Twitter, etc. Anyone who's been active online before those platforms existed knows much better on how high-quality an online community can be.
Look at Reddit. The large subreddits are broadly cesspools; they're more targeted by spams/trolls/brigades, they attract the worst actors, and they're much harder to moderate effectively.
The small subreddits are often excellent communities, since they don't attract the nonsense, and can be moderated more effectively just because the numbers are lower.
So many people can't even begin to grasp this because all they know about online interaction is their experience with the top-down walled gardens.
The monoliths can exist, but using them exclusively (which most people do!) just feed a bunch of garbage into your brain.
It's the equivalent of having only eaten fast food when you eat out. It sucks but if it's all you know, it's still food you didn't have to cook yourself so cool. But there's much better food out there with some effort!
It breaks my heart that most people only experience the internet only via the monolithic sites and apps.
It's criminal that some devices are sold that can only access the parts of the internet that the device maker can monetise.
I'm still optimistic though, I am still a member of a web based bulletin board from the 90s that has stood the test of time!
Christopher
Jimothy 🐢