Recommendation Twitter Alternatives

[frogwoman]

Aphid Twitter is still a bit of a factor, though?

Yeah, I think so.

 

[danny la rouge]

@danny la rouge has upset three people, who presumably follow rival Zen schools and are triggered by any mention of Plum Village.

Have I? Wow. That’s fun. And here’s me thinking I’d only insulted coriander lovers!

 

[Silas Loom]

Have I? Wow. That’s fun. And here’s me thinking I’d only insulted coriander lovers!

They are probably coriander lovers as well. It’ll be one of those Venn things. Intersectional.

 

[skyscraper101]

The whole thing is just ridiculously fragmented at the moment. At least with twitter everyone was in one place, so you could filter things into useful lists, keep an eye on what the bad guys were saying, and see what the good guys were saying too and enjoy the back and forth thaht ensued.

Now it just seems all the bad guys will stay on X while a limited number good guys head to bluesky or whatever if they didn't already ditch the whole idea of tweeting altogether. So in reality nobody particularly benefits and you now have to use multiple platforms, which is a turn off in itself, and by nature they are now more echo-chambery, and so there's less activity, less interactivity, less rebutle, and less accountability, and less chance of things going viral.

Also I don't actually know anyone outside of geeky tech/media people who have even heard of bluesky. Of course, that was once true of twitter but it's going to need some hurculean feat of migration for it to enter the public conciousness to the level that twitter once had. If anything Threads has a better chance of this because of the instagram/fb association but again I don't see the kind of uptake there from non-tech/media/brands that made twitter what it was. It's just an overall rubbish state of affairs now.

 

[danny la rouge]

They are probably coriander lovers as well. It’ll be one of those Venn things. Intersectional.

I just checked that site you mentioned and apparently I’m on a block list called “MAGA, Right-Wingers, and other chuds”. No idea how I’d have got on that.

 

[frogwoman]

I just checked that site you mentioned and apparently I’m on a block list called “MAGA, Right-Wingers, and other chuds”. No idea how I’d have got on that.

A lot of those lists are being set up by right wingers themselves.

 

[frogwoman]

Tbh, I wouldn't check that clear sky site too often. Just a recipe for misery imo

 

[Puddy_Tat]

A lot of those lists are being set up by right wingers themselves.

I haven't blocked - or according to clearsky - been blocked by anyone.

i must try harder...

but yes, there are some weird games going on - i picked up something about some blocklists trying to trick trans people in to getting on to a blocklist of anti-trans people so that they will be blocked by other trans people who subscribe to that blocklist.

or something like that.

i don't quite understand the blocklist thing, and not entirely sure it's healthy.

 

[frogwoman]

I'd be interested in speaking to the kind of aphid fanatic who felt strongly enough about aphids to block me though.

 

[xenon]

Have I? Wow. That’s fun. And here’s me thinking I’d only insulted coriander lovers! I refuse to believe that anyone actually loves coriander. I mean I get that people hate the flavour but love it. Unfathomable.

 

[xenon]

Who’s on Telegram? I’ve been thinking about joining just to see WTF is going on. But then, what is point. Anguish and more cunts. Facebook is enough for me thank you in that regard.

 

[xenon]

Facebook friends excepted of course.

 

[frogwoman]

I haven't blocked - or according to clearsky - been blocked by anyone.

i must try harder...

but yes, there are some weird games going on - i picked up something about some blocklists trying to trick trans people in to getting on to a blocklist of anti-trans people so that they will be blocked by other trans people who subscribe to that blocklist.

or something like that.

i don't quite understand the blocklist thing, and not entirely sure it's healthy.

Yes there are. I think a follower of mine from Twitter got picked up by that. Another friend of mine has opinions that are a bit right of centre in some respects - though nothing pro Trump or racist etc - and she's trans so gets a bit of transmisogyny thrown in as well. It has absolutely been weaponised against people the blocker doesn't like by lumping them in with Nazis etc and a lot of the people affected seem to disproportionately be trans as well - although tbf that might be because trans people made up a lot of very early active posters.

That said I do think it's way better than twitter. I think that some of the complaints re moderation are a bit unfair because its immensely difficult to moderate any site on that scale without upsetting someone. But it's obvious that they'll have to hire a more dedicated content team and probably automate a lot of their processes as it gets bigger

 

[Silas Loom]

I'd be interested in speaking to the kind of aphid fanatic who felt strongly enough about aphids to block me though.

Maybe there can be a facilitated workshop where the aphid people and the ladybird people put aside past grievances and move forward in a spirit of reconciliation and empathy. One with a talking stick. If all else fails, you can twat the aphidists with it.

 

[frogwoman]

Who’s on Telegram? I’ve been thinking about joining just to see WTF is going on. But then, what is point. Anguish and more cunts. Facebook is enough for me thank you in that regard.

It's all right for group chats and I use it occasionally to chat to friends in Russia where a lot of other sites/apps are blocked. But I don't like it apart from that

 

[frogwoman]

Maybe there can be a facilitated workshop where the aphid people and the ladybird people put aside past grievances and move forward in a spirit of reconciliation and empathy. One with a talking stick. If all else fails, you can twat the aphidists with it.

I think that the ladybirds would just eat the aphids though.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Who’s on Telegram?

I am, but only in fairly limited areas, keeping in contact with some specific people, and a few selected groups. and i don't use my main mobile number for it. I prefer not to mix different aspects of life too much...

 

[danny la rouge]

Who’s on Telegram? I’ve been thinking about joining just to see WTF is going on. But then, what is point. Anguish and more cunts. Facebook is enough for me thank you in that regard.

I’m on Telegram but I use it as a message app, for group chats. I’m on a few family chats: one with my mum, one where we talk about my mum, one where we talk about my youngest sister’s cancer treatment, and so on.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

one with my mum, one where we talk about my mum,

just make bloody sure you post things in the right chat

i think i managed only to drop a bollock once in msn messenger (when that was still a thing), and that caused confusion rather than embarrassment - was in a fairly silly chat (can't remember what about) with one person and fairly heavy going feminist / queer politics with another and sent something about feminism to the silly chat person

which was probably better than the other way round

(likewise at one time i must have had about 6 different people on phone contacts called either Steve, Stephen or Steven and once or twice messaged the wrong one, but avoided anything embarrassing - at that time also had work people on personal mobile phone, current job comes with work mobile phone and the two are kept firmly separate)

 

[mx wcfc]

Who’s on Telegram? I’ve been thinking about joining just to see WTF is going on. But then, what is point. Anguish and more cunts. Facebook is enough for me thank you in that regard.

A good anarchist I know is on Telegram.

"Know your enemy" and all that.

He was getting a bit paranoid about it. Maybe he's right though.

 

[danny la rouge]

just make bloody sure you post things in the right chat

Oh, I was burned early on by sms, so I’m careful.

Back in the olden days, when mobile phones weren't smart, and before the address book was very useable, I used to remember the last three digits of people's numbers and select them that way.

So one weekend I texted my brother that my partner and kids were away for the weekend and did he fancy coming round for a drink.

Imagine my embarrassment when the new lass at work texted back that she didn't think it was a good idea. I wanted to be swallowed whole by the Earth.

The Monday morning at work was some of the worst moments of my life. It still comes back to me when I'm trying to get to sleep at night. She seemed to take it in good humour, and to believe my explanation. But I was mortified.

 

[skyscraper101]

I don't think anything is as good as twitter was before it became X. Everyone was on it. Good people, dickheads, local stuff, public services/servants, media, brands, etc. Tweetdeck in particular was the bomb for keeping across it all. I had so many lists filtered to mentions or hashtagged tweets in specific areas of interest. It was like having a personalised news wire.

I even had a friendship group of people who were prolific neighborhood twitter users when I lived in West London. We had regular drinks and meetups and became friends. I'm still in touch with a few of them. They were peak times.

 

[DaveCinzano]

I don't think anything is as good as twitter was before it became X. Everyone was on it. Good people, dickheads, local stuff, public services/servants, media, brands, etc. Tweetdeck in particular was the bomb for keeping across it all. I had so many lists filtered to mentions or hashtagged tweets in specific areas of interest. It was like having a personalised news wire.

I even had a friendship group of people who were prolific neighborhood twitter users when I lived in West London. We had regular drinks and meetups and became friends. I'm still in touch with a few of them. They were peak times.

This, pretty much. I met a bunch of people locally through Bristol tweetups and twestivals, I found cheap deskspace through it, I got work through it, it was useful for certain organising and coordinating activities in the time before law enforcement got their heads around it, it helped facilitate crowdsourcing research, tools like Tweetdeck meant you could be a lot more focused (rather than just having the diarrhoea hosepipe on constantly). There were non-trivial, real-world benefits that I accrued from it.

 

[danny la rouge]

I just checked that site you mentioned and apparently I’m on a block list called “MAGA, Right-Wingers, and other chuds”. No idea how I’d have got on that.

The list is maintained by someone called @thebridget.bsky.social I’m blocked by them so I can’t see, but I’d be interested to know if others think they are a bad faith player setting up trick block lists to get “the left” blocking each other. Or if they in fact think I’m “another chud”, whatever that may be.

 

[Silas Loom]

The list is maintained by someone called @thebridget.bsky.social I’m blocked by them so I can’t see, but I’d be interested to know if others think they are a bad faith player setting up trick block lists to get “the left” blocking each other. Or if they in fact think I’m “another chud”, whatever that may be.

The account consists only of posts which seem congruent with someone taking a rather scattergun approach to chud identification. It flags a now-deleted post, then revels in having added everyone who liked it. That sort of thing.

I don’t think, though, that it has accrued enough of those posts over enough time to be completely plausible, given the presumable size of the list. So I’d bet on bad faith.

But how can one tell? I believed in the Bosnian until he turned out to be Dwyer. Nothing is certain any more. What’s unlikely is that many - if any - people have blocked you as a result. Three blockers in total really isn’t very many, and it hasn’t increased since yesterday.

Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it to everyone’s attention. No good comes of it.

 

[danny la rouge]

The account consists only of posts which seem congruent with someone taking a rather scattergun approach to chud identification. It flags a now-deleted post, then revels in having added everyone who liked it. That sort of thing.

I don’t think, though, that it has accrued enough of those posts over enough time to be completely plausible, given the presumable size of the list. So I’d bet on bad faith.

But how can one tell? I believed in the Bosnian until he turned out to be Dwyer. Nothing is certain any more. What’s unlikely is that many - if any - people have blocked you as a result. Three blockers in total really isn’t very many, and it hasn’t increased since yesterday.

Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it to everyone’s attention. No good comes of it.

Aye, thanks. It’s ok I’m not obsessing! I’m just interested in the phenomenon of bad faith block lists. Which is a phenomenon that shouldn’t really have been surprising.