Leslie
davekarpfHow would we know that Twitter has become a ghost town?
I think it’s happening already, and we know because Elon accidentally told us.
My latest, on Substack:
(There is something deeply entertaining about how much more engagement this post is getting on mastodon than on Twitter 🤷♂️)
Mark@davekarpf I reckon Mastodon followers count for much more than an equivalent number of Twitter followers, too. Mastodon followers are more likely to see your posts rather than algorithmically boosted junk. And more likely to engage in good faith, I'd bet.
Aunt Chicky@markcooper @davekarpf ... and we're better looking!
@auntchicky @davekarpf Not sure about that.
Grandpa Don@davekarpf
New follower here.
I was not one of the 42k on 🐔💩. I never stumbled across you. Of the ~1000 contributors I did follow, i consistently saw about 3. Even when I went to their homepage and liked, rt'd, and replied to a bunch of their posts, they remained invisible to my feed. Tw had me in a box.
Whartever brought you to my attention this morning would not have on 🐔💩.
New follower here.
I was not one of the 42k on 🐔💩. I never stumbled across you. Of the ~1000 contributors I did follow, i consistently saw about 3. Even when I went to their homepage and liked, rt'd, and replied to a bunch of their posts, they remained invisible to my feed. Tw had me in a box.
Whartever brought you to my attention this morning would not have on 🐔💩.
@dbc3 @davekarpf I approve of the rooster/poop emoji combo, but may I also suggest the custom bird site emoji? 
TankFox@davekarpf Mastodon has the same great energy that Google Plus did before google shoehorned in the youtube integration, tried to force real names, and ultimately killed off the project.
The slight degree of learning involved with joining up almost certainly filters for interesting people over famous people and that's quite alright with me too!
Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco@davekarpf Much more engaging on Mastodon. Less abuse for POC too. More thoughtful. Hope it stays that way.
flexghost.@davekarpf awesome.
Andres@davekarpf It's quite a blessing that Twitter didn't immediately collapse. Instead, people are slowly migrating away, which allows time for people to bulk up their Mastodon servers to handle new users, allows for developers of 3rd party apps to switch from using Twitter's API to Mastodon's API, and allows for usability issues to be worked out of the various pieces of software.
Sid Wishes@davekarpf it's also ironic that Musk accused Twitter of shadow banning. Now liberals are shadow banned on his whims.
@sid_wishes …yeah, who could’ve seen that coming? (Sooooo many people)
@sid_wishes @davekarpf I got suspended for a post that clearly offended the butt hurt egos of his right wing gestapo monitoring bots. What rule break can you see from this screen shot
Lonewolf@sid_wishes @davekarpf fuck Elon and fuck Twitter
I hope he goes bankrupt
Elons a redneck
Hah I can say it here and not get banned
I hope he goes bankrupt
Elons a redneck
Hah I can say it here and not get banned
Dan Robrish@davekarpf I'm definitely among those who haven't deleted the Twitter account, but seldom log in to it now.
Dubi is here 
@robrish @davekarpf I never log in, except to follow links from here. And every single time, there's a single notification. And every single time, that notification is a push for a #Voldemusk post, who I don't even follow. So, yeah, doesn't make me want to come back.
naught101@Dubikan @robrish @davekarpf I don't follow him, or have him blocked, and I don't get notifications about him ever. I wonder if it's because I'm not in the US?
He does appear in my suggested follows list regularly.
Other than that. hi!
Matt 3595@robrish @davekarpf ditto here. I check in about once a week to see if anyone has been trying to get hold of me as I turned off notifications when Elon’s tweets started getting pushed. I won’t delete the account in case anyone tries to impersonate me (I’m a nobody but some people are that sad)
El Duvelle@davekarpf Also note that the “view counter” shown there does not correspond to “unique” views (the more conservative measure) but any views - could be the same person scrolling many times past your post. Interestingly, they’ve now completely removed the unique view count (which used to be accessible in the details of a tweet).
@davekarpf If one is on Mastadon to spite Twitter it's no different than Gab. If one doesn't use a platform why care? If one uses multiple platforms from Mastodon to nestr, IRC to Discord, Facebook to Reddit then why not hope they all thrive?
@vcg3rd no different than gab is an interesting frame. Immediate reaction: the problem (IMO) with people spite-leaving Twitter for Gab isn’t the spite-leaving, it’s the people.
Like, if all the reactionaries want to leave and start their own site, that’s good! They’ll form a hellscape, but it’ll be THEIR hellscape.
Twitter is a stack of semi/overlapping communities. If my communities all spite-leave for mastodon, then it’ll be good. Because the people are good.
Stephen@davekarpf Interesting. The few times I pop into my Twitter feed these days, almost everything in my “Following” feed is from corporate/ media / brand accounts. Individual - and especially power user - activity has fallen off a cliff.
Zav@88 @davekarpf Twitter activity statistically increased since Musk's takeover.
@thull @88 yeah but those numbers are inflated as hell.
Before the takeover, Twitter had a team that was deleting hundreds of thousands of new bot accounts every day.
Elon fired basically that entire team. And then, shocker, Twitter acitivity increased. That isn’t NECESSARILY spambots, but it’s a pretty strong hypothesis.
That’s what I find interesting in the numbers. Other peoples’ Twitter might be hoppin’. But may network neighborhood is tumbleweeds.
Mark Wainwright@davekarpf You were probably never going to get 42K views, even if all 42K followers were active, because the algorithmic timeline on Twitter.com/Twitter app means they won’t necessarily ever be shown it. The followers most likely to see any tweet were those using 3rd party apps (for a complete, chronological timeline) but Elon just killed that option and I think average view counts are down slightly further as a result. 3rd party app users were probably a very active minority.
Chip Stewart@davekarpf “I have said a great many things, I have meant every one of them, and none of them very nice.” This sums up a lot of my 12 or so years there, even when not talking about the platform’s new owner.
Stefan Scholl@davekarpf in other news: 2 of about 40 followers read my toot: https://mastodon.social/@Stefan_S_from_H/109733130941689802
Sarah FackrellThis: "When I tweet something, it isn’t actually viewed by 42,000 individuals. It’s seen by the subset of those 42,000 people that happen to be staring at Twitter’s chronological timeline at the time I send the tweet, plus anyone who is shown the tweet through Twitter’s algorithmic timeline. And that reduced-megaphone turns out to be a lot less irreplaceable." - @davekarpf
Rev. GothAliceGeocities hit counters.
We've learned nothing other than dopamine can work to sell a platform.
I remember hit counters, early on, and noting that they were clearly not for the visitors. Nothing but an ego-stroke for the site operator, or content producer in the case of social media.
Likes, retweets, and comments weren't enough. Tolerance levels adapted.
Yes, I'm saying social media is a drug.
Prove me wrong. 😜
@design_law @davekarpf Even worse, hit counters I saw as a liability, not an asset. If I visit someone's site and it shows a visitor count of 122—you're directly advertising that you aren't a reliable or trusted source… /even if you are./
@alice @design_law Geocities is the OG. Now you've got me reminiscing about the sitemeter days of the blogosphere though...
@davekarpf Perl, for me. I wrote these silly tools as CGI scripts back in the day. Around the same time I was developing PalmOS applications. 😝
Dave Mandl@davekarpf Do we know what the view counts were before, for comparison? I've been looking at Twitter Analytics, basically the same thing, since long before Musk took over, and the numbers were always lower than my follower count. I have fewer followers than you, admittedly, but still.
@dmandl yeah, I’m curious about that. It’s the type of question that Twitter’s comms team could answer, if Twitter hadn’t fired the whole comms team!
@davekarpf Haha, good point.
OldeHippi 🦋🎨🙏🌺And .... 4. Twitter is not working.
Musk is a fool. He fired most of the staff. He's selling all the material contents. He's not paying rent.
Twitter is broken.
PS: I understand your desire for cheap (free) advertising, but really, why are YOU still at Twitter, where Nazis are cherished? 🤔
David@davekarpf Interesting article. I think some people want it to implode in dramatic fashion but more than likely it's just going to slowly shrink to it's former size and maybe never truly go completely away.
Tim Richards@duskcomics @davekarpf Sounds like Yahoo.
Dan 🦺 Deboer@davekarpf I get the same feeling when I go to Twitter these days. I've never used it as a megaphone, just a way to interact with folks who share my interests, and it seems... hollow lately.
Idealistic Pragmatist 
@dandb this. Twitter was never IDEAL for that purpose, but these days it’s terrible for that purpose.
Adam Gessaman 
@davekarpf count me among category two over there. I left my account and deleted the app from all my devices.
I really hope that some of the other interesting people who are clinging to their Twitter follower counts will hop over as the network effect is destroyed.
Yusuf Toropovkey takeaway: "Thanks to Elon adding the view count to the native #Twitter app, we’re now constantly reminded how many people are actually seeing our tweets. For me, at least, what Elon revealed is that Twitter is a megaphone equipped with dying batteries."
@@davekarpf perhaps!
But my timeline full of music, sports and FE Dev is as busy as ever. It’s kind of irritating to navigate it with all the bugs on Twitter now.
Most of the people in that circle that have left still find more of an audience and value on Twitter it seems.
☕️🥞 Jelly Doll 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️@davekarpf the view counter exists just so Elon has a bigger number because he wasn’t getting enough likes.
The rest of us are lucky if we get 6 views.
Hans-Cees
Rob Shearer@davekarpf The assumption that even those staring at the non-algorithmic timeline at the time you post will see it does not seem to be true. On an entirely technical level, Twitter isn’t working any more. Thing get dropped. By one informal count, MOST things get dropped. Assuming that tweets not being displayed means you’ve been “shadowbanned” gives Elmo’s Twitter credit for intentionality that is demonstrably misplaced. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/01/23/twitter-frum-crumbling
Zeb Larson@davekarpf I mean, even before Musk took over the number of Twitter users who actively used it wasn’t great. A “heavy tweeter” was somebody who posted something three or four times a week and logged in once every day or two, and even that low bar was just 10% of the user base — and they’ve been declining since the pandemic started.
Stevoisiak@davekarpf Can you compare the vires your tweets got before Elon bought Twitter?
EdoJB@davekarpf I've found myself not using Twitter that often anymore. My time is spend between YouTube, Facebook or a real book. I think this is a great opportunity for many of us to take a step back from social media.
Ted Martens@davekarpf I guess the real test would be to compare with the view counts of your old tweets from before the takeover. Have you done that?
That's a good test. Will put it on the to-do list (this was meant to be a one-off piece, since I've got a backlog of other outlines. But, yeah, now I'm curious...)
Margarita Noriega@davekarpf this was really interesting, thanks! In my experience it’s been on the steady decline for a good 2-3 years
lp0 on fire 
Bleh. Anoying, distracting video clips…
Cykonot@davekarpf my Twitter feed has slowed significantly
Also it's dumber than it used to be lol
British Tech Guru@davekarpf for all musks proclaims about free speech, he still hasn't unbarred my account. My only crime was criticizing a politician. Exactly the same kind of free speech he was on about except I think for him free speech just means free for him but not anybody else. As far as I can see he just bought Twitter to be his own loud hailer.
roman kuba@davekarpf I hear you. The post was really resonating with me.
Twitter feels like a bad mess by now. Being one of the locked-but-not-deleted people. I rarely look at Twitter anymore and start to actually find much more engaging communities outside Twitter with actually way smaller networks.