Not true from what I can see - the only cohort who left Twitter were the uncompromising leftwing folks. OTOH, people with moderate views now can get points across that had been previously suppressed.
LLM auto-translations haven't changed that much. The current corporate seems to be trying to figure out why and whether those remaining huge mass of foreign users lean left or right by the criteria of US politics, but still haven't have any clue about that nor had accepted that non-English-speakers actually don't speak English lol(or, to say, find translated contents natural as speeches with reasonable flows of logic, to be even more blunt)
edit: since this is under a dead comment that might not bother too many: I'm suspecting that there must be two competing hypothesis inside the org that owns Twitter, one being more preferable than the other depending on where one is coming from, that users still remaining on the platform and active on it must be either A) appreciative of ultra right turn of the platform with increasingly dominant right wing ragemaxxing contents, or, B) they just exist as a colossal autonomous parasitic self-contained isolate hivemind that had always been at least equally influential as the host but now is also physically bigger and therefore more influential than what its owners consider the host.
Frankly, I find the Malfoy trend that was going on couple weeks ago to be highly sus, that it smelled like an artificial boosting campaign to map out political leanings of user clusters which has to be right leaning from the hypothesis A. It makes sense as to me as one, given my unique knowledge of political controversies surrounding Harry Potter and ... opinions expressed by its author JK Rowling, which absolutely everybody here knows about. And I'm imagining that, if it had been such an experiment, it must have been horrifying to watch the Potter villain simply accepted as completely non-controversial wholesome pro-LGBT pro-gay left-to-center content among the most influential and knowledgeable and skilled of Twitter users like nothing had happened since 2016 or so, supporting the undesirable hypothesis B, although that seems to have always been the reality to me.
I vacillate on the value of seeing this stuff. Sometimes I think its important my radar be aware that these attitudes are way more prevalent in society than they used to be. Lot's of my not-on-twitter peers I suspect are in a bubble and don't realize how much societal decay there has been around norms and batsh*t conspiracy thinking. As a citizen I think it's important not to be in a total bubble until the frog boiling temperature is reached.
At the same time, I'm pretty sure that low grade daily exposure to "look at all these neighbors of yours who wish you were dead" overstates the prevalence and the fact that the people who feel this way do so in no small part because they are getting a daily algo feed claiming I wish they were dead (spoiler - I don't want them dead). Since I find it really hard to break my Twitter addiction there is something about all of these emotions which keeps some susceptible humans like myself clicking, but like the article says, it's quite rare that I emerge from an hour of Twitter scrolling feeling anything but gross.
All of this is frustrating because I was very late to Twitter. I joined a year or two before the acquisition. I loved how I could connect with all sorts of interesting brilliant people in all sorts of interesting fields. I wish I could get that back but I guess that iteration of Twitter didn't sell enough ads.
nuts. i joined in 2008. that was when it was cool.
I have no doubt there ARE people out there with those horrific views and ARE actually making AI generated meme slop and posting it feeling satisfied, but I choose to believe that the vast majority are bots, and a fraction of the real humans doing it learned it from the bots. Just reading that sort of shit over and over again can change how you think about things if you aren't vigilant and the outcomes are more division. Plenty of bad folks in the world just want the division. They want people mad, and feeling afraid.
The times I've had the misfortune of reading replies on xitter, even on what should be technical topics, they have consisted of extremist maximalist takes with others chiming in to call them "based" [0]. Whatever its "algorithm" is, it definitely leans into the outrage farming / Balkanization project, regardless of the bots.
[0] which from context would seem to be shorthand for "freebased", as in smoking crack, despite apparent intent to the contrary
My experience as a young adult in the UK was that most people I knew had moved from Facebook to Instagram & Twitter in their early 20's.
Normal people whose interests would be things like football, going out drinking, and reality TV. The extent of their politics would be sharing a meme of Boris Johnson or complaining about COVID restrictions. I don't like the word 'normie', but that's exactly how you would describe them.
Looking through my following list now, these type of people have now either deleted their account, or haven't posted in years.
I don't think it's entirely political. But the rebrand to X and Musk's involvement made using it very uncool. It's seen of in the same vein as Facebook now, it's kind of embarrassing to admit you still use it.
The moderate views are always seen as too "boring" or "naive". There's always a vocal crowd who wants to tell you about it. Anyone willing to leave a comment is already too engaged enough to take a step back and find nuance in what is not being said.
The moderate on twitter is the proverbial old man yelling at clouds but imagining the clouds are actually some relevant audience of non-bots. I do admit we may define moderate differently here in which case there is a chance we are talking past each other.
Sounds like modern Twitter to me. Glad I deleted my account years ago.