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Comment by philipov | Hacker News Reader

The most important quality I hear people are looking for in a replacement for Twitter is "Everyone else is on it" so they're all stuck in a catch 22. I don't think this energy to get off Twitter is going to go anywhere.

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I think it's a mistake to think that Mastodon would necessarily be the beneficiary of any Twitter exodus. I think it's more likely that the beneficiaries would be established, centralized services like Discord or Reddit. The underlying media models may be different, but I suspect people care less about the model than about seeing things they're interested in, and plenty of these people will already have accounts on these other major services. (Some people use Twitter less for "participating in a specific niche community" and more for "building a personal brand", but there are other centralized services that provide that as well, like Instagram).

The biggest beneficiary of a Twitter exodus may be... our free time.

There's no reason we have to go anywhere after Twitter. Global social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc., didn't even exist 20 years ago. We're probably better off without them IMO. The best Twitter replacement may be nothing.

This. I'm taking a break from Twitter for a while, in part due to people in one of my communities trying to convince the rest of the community to decamp for mastodon. I've argued that it will do nothing of value for the community as a whole, and will rather negatively impact it.

I'm just frankly sick and tired of all the posturing, virtue signalling, and other wasteful garbage I saw on there. Oh, and the massive upswing in antisemitism over the last month (started pre-Musk). That had something to do with it as well.

There is a good argument that Twitter and a whole class of other social media and related sites (HN, Reddit, YouTube, TV etc) are "time wasters."

I think if any of these disappeared, or all of them, are people suddenly going to start finding more productive uses of their time? No, they're just going to find other time wasters.

> are people suddenly going to start finding more productive uses of their time?

I think switching to "less destructive" would be a big step up.

It might be hard to quantify the positive/negative impact each of these have had but you have to agree they all had major effects on society.

Agreed. Now's a good opportunity for Twitter users to consider whether or not having Twitter in their life at all is a net positive.

People aren't looking for Reddit or Discord. They already have these. The people using Twitter to promote their business-of-choice are already on Reddit and Discord if they want to be. They don't want Twitter because it's a good way to host their communities, they want Twitter for cross-promoting their community to other communities.

We're both necessarily speculating here, so I'll counter by suggesting that an enormous proportion of Twitter users don't actually care whether or not they're using Twitter, they just care that the content they want to consume and the people they want to follow are on Twitter. They can't be "using Reddit or Discord if they want to be", because that's not where the community already is. Solving the collective action problem to overcome this inertia is hard, but easier in tumultuous times like these.

I wouldn't be surprised if some huge percentage of Twitter "users" are people following random links that friends/groups link to them. They'll just as easily follow links to various other services.

On a similar note: I think it's also a mistake that a mass Twitter exodus to Mastodon would actually benefit that platform. Smallish waves, sure. An overwhelming influx of users? Please no.

Anyone who has experienced a tiny forum (or subreddit, or whatever) going viral knows what I'm talking about. Most of the time that experience at the very least transforms the existing local subculture for the worse, and sometimes outright destroys it.

If everyone on current-day Twitter would move to Mastodon at once it would turn into current-day Twitter. Which is not why I'm on Mastodon.

EDIT: can whomever downvoted this tell me what exactly they disagree with here?

I dont think discord or reddit could replace what I do on twitter. As in, on twitter I following selected bunch of people I am interested in. Neither twitter nor reddit can do that. It is not that twitter cant be replaced or abandoned, I think that I will move out over time. I expect there to be a lot more drama over time and it already had enough drama already. (I even muted Elon Musk cause he was source of quite of lot nonsense crap).

But, it wont be reddit nor discord. Maybe it will just be nothing.

Like with everything else that is large, any shift will be slow and gradual. You are right saying that any “surge” is not going to last, but it does not mean the change won’t happen. Everyone else was stuck on Facebook 5-8 years ago, but many people from my age group rarely go there anymore.

This is true until it isn't. I expect that if Twitter dies, it won't be a mass exodus, but a thousand cuts. It's not dying tomorrow, but in my opinion its days are numbered.

And I don't mean just because Musk took over, although he's made some decisions already that make no sense to me. It's got issues. People WANT an alternative.

I've decided to not care about that (I've never had a Twitter account anyway). The idea that "everyone else is on it" is the problem, not the solution. The only real question is, is there a community you want to be part of? The rest of it is for their benefit, not yours.

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