I think this misses the point that a lot of nitter users aren’t looking for a social media platform to interact with people on, but to access information only available on twitter. “Use a completely different platform” is useful to people consuming the social media product, but not useful for people who are uninterested in “content you like” but in very specific content they’re interested in.
I’m not saying there’s a solution that’s good either or there needs to be a good solution. It’s a private business and there are all sorts of shitburger private businesses building golden walls around important content only available on their crappy platform and there’s no alternatives other than submit to their exploitation or remain ignorant in the world of subjects that are important to you.
But it would be nice if there were alternatives between brutal exploitation and unrequited ignorance. But heading over to mastodon or whatever doesn’t help you read “important thread about X discovery” or whatever since the content is singular and only exists on twitter.
Personally HN is the only social media like platform I use, and I have no interest in maintaining the energy levels to participate in the others. I’m just a passive observer of specific pieces of content in those platforms.
> but to access information only available on twitter
I see this being said a lot, even by some of my own contacts who insist on occasionally sending me links to things on twitter¹, but I'm not convinced there is really much of worth on there that isn't available elsewhere. What is uniquely on there that I might possibly care about isn't, IMO, worth being associated with or exposed to the rest.
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[1] I used to use nitter to view such things, but stopped that many moons ago and ask if they have any other source, or if it is a joke maybe download/screenshot and forward that way.
You may feel the subject is inane, but an example that sticks out in my mind was the Varda replication thread of LK99. It was really only on twitter, I found it entertaining to read occasionally, but I wasn’t really going to invest energy in asking for screenshots etc. But I agree with you regarding being associated with it exposed to the rest. That’s the value nitter brought ! It’s a sad day that it’s gone. End of the world? No. But the world has become slightly less good.
Twitter at least used to be the best place to find official statements from local government, local cops, etc. They would put stuff out on their official accounts, other people would post video of news conferences, and so on. I am not sure there is a replacement.
I would love this. Absolutely love this. Unfortunately, this is not happening now. The vast majority of 'official'/'governmental' institutions/people seem post on Twitter and, sadly, only on Twitter. Maybe Facebook if you're lucky. I've had to resort to using the premium tier of IFTTT to get things like road closure notices for my area.. it's maddening.
I'd love if they would set up some ActivityPub something under their own domain that I could subscribe to :/
Twitter is gone for people who don't want to log in. The only options are to accept it and move on with life or support a competing system. Former nitter users may not have been looking to interact on a social media platform, but the content they enjoyed was coming from a social media platform whose users post because they get interaction on the platform. If former nitter users don't want to interact anywhere, then they will not have anything like nitter, because new platforms need to provide interaction to people posting content in order to grow, even if it is only "views", "likes", "reposts", etc.
I’m not saying there’s a solution that’s good either or there needs to be a good solution. It’s a private business and there are all sorts of shitburger private businesses building golden walls around important content only available on their crappy platform and there’s no alternatives other than submit to their exploitation or remain ignorant in the world of subjects that are important to you.
But it would be nice if there were alternatives between brutal exploitation and unrequited ignorance. But heading over to mastodon or whatever doesn’t help you read “important thread about X discovery” or whatever since the content is singular and only exists on twitter.
Personally HN is the only social media like platform I use, and I have no interest in maintaining the energy levels to participate in the others. I’m just a passive observer of specific pieces of content in those platforms.