Shortform: Twitter

I don’t pay much attention to #X these days, having abandoned it a while back, but things like basically gutting the “block” function make me wonder what the strategy is here, or if there is one. I don’t think this solves a real problem in a way that will make the service better for users.

That’s the problem. I can’t think of a single thing Elon Musk has done that actually improved #Twitter. Not one thing.

Lax moderation and a UX polluted with upsells and junk might get them more money short-term and make it more fun for right-wing trolls, but as far as practical-minded product decisions that took Twitter to the next level, everything Musk has done so far isn’t just off-putting, it’s weird. Bad products aren’t good long-term bets. Especially not a product that (1) already doesn’t make money, (2) has a deeply entrenched reputation for being bad, and (3) is facing an ever-broadening array of less-bad competitors.

There is no way he’s getting his $44 billion back with X in this shape.

Every day, I wonder how long #Instagram is going to stay around. The experience just gets worse and worse.

At this point, my feed is a torrent of barely relevant ads and videos that have no value to me. The limitations are ridiculous: you can’t copy text, you can’t include links in posts, you can’t browse the site if you’re not logged in. The design isn’t ineptly bad so much as calculatedly, maliciously bad.

I remember, a decade ago and more, when these sites—now synonymous with an internet gone bad—were legitimately cool places to be. They had a reputation for oversharing and mundanity, but they felt like communities you wanted to be part of. The only thing I get from them now is stress, chaos, and the pervasive sense of being harassed by the people who run them. I still share my work on #Twitter and Instagram—unfortunately, they remain relevant enough to qualify as parts of my “digital presence” that I have to pay attention to—but I never browse them. I hate them too much to bother.

And I wonder if this will always be the natural conclusion of any mainstream-oriented social media site. Could something with much more limited features and minimal advertising survive? Do people really want to watch strangers’ home movies as much as some venture capitalist thinks they do?

Twitter

X Blocks

Instagone