Comment by jesse_dot_id
9 hours ago
Astounds me that anyone is still using that platform after seeing how Musk treated the engineers when he took over.
9 hours ago
Astounds me that anyone is still using that platform after seeing how Musk treated the engineers when he took over.
I was recently at a brown bag at work - regarding enablement of AI in the workplace (it was awesome - all over the roadmap) - and one of the audience asked the speakers (a very diverse group of people) how on earth they keep up with all the developments in AI?
All six of the speakers immediately said Twitter was realistically the only place you can keep up with the conversation. Having an extensively curated list means that anytime anything breaks (and often a few hours before) you are going to hear about it on X/Twitter.
I would love to know if there is anything even close to the reach of X. It has a lot of problems - but if you want to track breaking news, I can't think of anything else close to it.
The big issue with this approach is that it will destroy your sanity for things that are often a big bag of hype with nothing underneath. I often find HN to be better because things that get on the front page are vetted beyond 'someone on twitter hyped up a thing'
HN is still great but it’s in decline, I still hear about AI developments on r/LocalLlama and X sometimes weeks before they make it here if even at all.
And all the commentary here is negative, skeptical and mean. It’s like Slashdot when Apple started ascending and everyone was complaining that iPods will never catch on.
> things that get on the [HN] front page are vetted beyond 'someone on twitter hyped up a thing'
Interesting take. I'm not aware that anyone is doing vote rings or vote buying very successfully (considering that my own blog also makes it at an expected rate, and I know there isn't a group of friends voting that up) but I kinda assume that this is a thing for some of the bigger launches where they are hoping for conversions. Beyond a defined group coordinating their posts or votes, though, surely HN's front page can't be seen as vetted beyond "oh this looks trendy/hype"? People don't vote only after trying out the product or reading the full article. In many cases that would mean voting after it has already disappeared off of the front page for good
> Having an extensively curated list
This is key.
My goodness, the only branch of work that I can think of where knowing something a few hours earlier is probably day trading also.
Seriously, if you're working on anything worthwhile, you can wait for the weekly digest. Everything else just seems like hyperiding.
You can still stay pretty up to date (at least in AI) without even being on X, since everything distills out to every other platform anyway. Between /r/LocalLlama and the ThursdAI and Latent Space newsletters, I'm at most only a few days away from whatever the latest hype is.
I absolutely agree with your sentiment - but it is often the case where you will get into the office at 9:00 AM - and everyone is talking about the biggest release/development that morning - and by lunch it's kind of old news and people have moved on to new thing - and so by the time you are interesting in talking about the thing that happened last week - implications, use, whether it's legit or just hype - people have all moved onto the new thing.
HN is a nice consolidated view - and I pull up the home page 2-3 times a day (and have done so for 10+ years every day) - but, there is a firehose of information coming in on X - particularly if you have a very highly curated list - and some people are insanely high signal - Karpathy for instances always seems to zoom in on important things.
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I had to reluctuntaly create an account on twitter after years because of the exact same reason. AI research discussion is more active there than anywhere else. I've tried to use nitter's rss feed to stave off of the platform but it was limiting.
Well, Twitter has a lot of separate spheres. It's pretty easy to curate just tpot (the part that concerns itself with the Bay area, venture capital, and so forth) by following the right people and then engaging with posts that are on-topic.
Even when it was Twitter drinking from the firehose didn't really make your life better. I don't need a two sentence breaking update from a Miyazaki baby to stay on top of this stuff, and quite frankly if they can't bother to make a blog post or press release it's probably just noise any way.
This assumes that "breaking news" is accurate, it's not, nor is "breaking news" ever worth reading.
This is just busy work chasing nothing but vanity.
Like asking heroin addicts what heroin they prefer. What an utter waste time.
bsky is meant to hold the promise of control your algorithm, I don't see why that can't be the model going forward
The problem is largely one of community. The folks talking about AI are still primarily on X and haven't moved over.
The tech seems great, the people don't
He banned me after I replied to his tweet with my display name set as "Elon's Musk".
I think I lasted <1 week after this takeover.
Almost as bad as saying vaccines are safe and effective.
That's just a drop compared to the ocean compared to this one time when he performed multiple nazi salute in front of an entire country, or when he single handedly decided to intervene in a foreign war via Star link control or when he messed with entire branches of the American government
> nazi salute, foreign war intervention, government influence
Leading with the supposed "nazi salute" really detracts from the other, much more legitimate and substantive issues you raised.
Why am I supposed to care about that, as a platform user? Twitter isn't a jobs program for a particular set of engineers. I'll leave when it stops being entertaining. Comments like these are so weird.
Of all the things he did or said, this is pretty benign
Astounds me that anyone was using the platform even before Musk took over it.
It's cheaper to try to extort more out of a sucker than setting up a proper decentralized alternative. That's how I personally see what's going on, that nobody is moving out but everyone focus on gaming the system.
> how Musk treated the engineers
Probably the least impactful factor for most users.
Unfortunately, independent of the politics, Musk destroyed X with many many odd decisions. Rebranding from Twitter to X is one of the top ones.
You'd be surprised how easy it is for people to compartmentalize their principles. Many do it day to day every time they purchase something online that was probably made using less than ideal labour practices.
Still, I'd advocate to leave social media in general. And certainly to get off twitter.
Hmm, I'd argue what you call "compartmentalize their principles" is in fact, NOT having principles.
Correct me if I'm wrong: I'm asserting that having a principle is an inalienable belief that actually guides behavior, not selectively applies to behavior.
Though generally: yes, I agree: get off twitter, and I'd go a step further and say..minimize all social media involvement.
I would assert that a principle is a belief which guides behavior, yes, but with the understanding that the weight of the guidance and the weight of the conviction varies.
I don't mean that in a fully negative way, since belief and choices are rarely atomic.
Take, for example, someone who believes animals shouldn't suffer unnecessarily. That can manifest anywhere from veganism to just avoiding factory farmed meat. I wouldn't point at any one position on that spectrum and say they don't believe their own stated principle, but I would say that some have weaker convictions than others.
I agree with your sentiment. But if we go this rigid with it, we might find that the majority of humanity does not have principles.
The same as most tech companies treat their employees?
Lots of good discussion there still if you follow the right people and block certain categories of discussion. If you use lists then you'll see no suggested content beyond who you follow.
I'm more astounded that people think every single part of it is a cesspool when in reality there are gems to be found that aren't in any other X alternative like Bluesky or Mastodon or (lol) Threads.
OSINT, retrogaming, fantasy art, simpsons memes, music tech news, celebrities, bizzare art projects.. I love my experience on X. I dont make any lists or anything.
They’ve also started auto-translating and cross posting Japanese X content, which has been the coolest cross-cultural thing I’ve experienced on the Internet since I started using IRC.
This is a poor take. "You can make this mismanaged steaming pile of bot-infested garbage better if you just filter everything!"
How is it a poor take? Yes that's exactly what I said to do. It's the same as Reddit, I don't read whatever garbage is on r/all, I follow specific subreddits. Honestly people should curate no matter what social media they're on and find ways to stop seeing suggested content; my Instagram shows me only people I follow too, via a third party app/mod.
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The problem is that there isn't really an alternative. The discussion is still happening there and nowhere else. (Trust me, I've looked.)