This self inflicted damage and grievances show can’t be done soon enough. Time to close the curtain.
2 Likes
The whole idea of turning Twitter into an “everything app” is so absurd - it wasn’t set up for that, it would be much easier, technically, to start from scratch with that in mind. The only reason to try to Frankenstein Twitter into… that is because you start off with a huge captive user base for your eventual app. I find it baffling how Elno just doesn’t seem to understand how everything he does is alienating users, that he doesn’t recognize how dumb he’s being. The only bit I think I can see his thinking is the bit specifically about turning Twitter into a Nazi bar, and not getting how that would alienate users: he clearly feels a kinship with the fascists, and he’s never had any problems with people not wanting to do business with him, so what’s the issue? (The problem being, he also really doesn’t understand that going full fash on social media is what’s made people now see him as toxic as well…)
6 Likes
I mean, it started as an app to send and read messages from pagers, for Glod’s sake!
They’ve done a lot to turn its limitations, like the sacred timeline, into virtues, and maybe that simplicity is why it did so well, but trying to add the kitchen sink to it now is really going to be an unwelcome shock to current user expectations.
I guess it’s like Longtermism. The current users’ wants are outvoted by those billions of future users.
9 Likes
I’ve seen so many services that companies tried to upgrade into something else, that strained against an infrastructure that was built for something quite different, but this is really the worst. The design, the user dynamics, the user expectations, plus the actual technology all work completely against it. It doesn’t help that Elno got rid of everyone who understood how it worked, and is trying to turn it into something completely different with a skeleton staff that can barely keep what it is afloat. It’s like a bad joke.
The billions of hypothetical future users, as opposed to the zero actual users it will have when it all falls apart, I guess.
9 Likes
It was SubEthaEdit for multiple OSes.
2 Likes
… we haven’t seen him add anything to it yet
There’s no evidence that he ever will
He doesn’t even know how to change the name 
4 Likes
Not to defend him or anything, but no followers or no tweets doesn’t mean fake. Twitter was never really a social network, it was a de facto replacement for RSS feeds. You need an account to follow feeds even if you have nothing to say yourself.
I checked twitter daily for years, and I had less than 10 followers. If I check the account of anyone I know IRL who’s always talking about what happened on twitter, their last tweet would be years ago asking a brand for customer support. That’s just how the vast majority of twitter’s users have always used the service.
3 Likes
Welcome!
I guess. 
You can’t be 100% sure, people can look like bots and vice versa… but no tweets and no followers still seems like a good metric.
You had more than zero followers. Your friends had more than zero tweets. So these examples aren’t helping your case of how normal it is to have no followers or tweets…
7 Likes
I know people who use WeChat or whatever for their Chinese everything app. They only do it because if you go to China on business it’s basically essential. They know the Chinese government is monitoring everything, but there is no alternative to the app if you want to book a train ticket, contact a client, or pay a bill in a restaurant.
I’m not sure many people in China or the West like that kind of situation. Of course in China, it’s irrelevant what people like.
10 Likes
I don’t have a case, I’m a person talking. Not everything is some weird argument.
3 Likes
You signed up for an account and posted your view on the matter this thread is about.
Why, then?
Anyway:
8 Likes
John “Stephe” Barron-Musk
5 Likes
Seems legit…
1 Like
Roger roger!
4 Likes
Official Tourism Advert, “Come to China! It is Irrelevant what you think!” 
Edited as I thought better of part of my comment.
1 Like
Elno just doesn’t seem to learn (nor understand context). Even in the '90s, when Elno first tried to create it, it just didn’t work as a product. (Ironically the only bit of the business that did work was Paypal, acquired in a merger, and if Elno hadn’t been forced out, he would have shut that bit down.)
He’s relying on there continuing to be a big user base (except there wasn’t, even before alienating users, due to bots and abandoned accounts), naively thinking users will stick around when he pulls the rug out and replaces Twitter with… something else. Except even if that were true (which it clearly isn’t), it still wouldn’t work, given people have choices and are already using other apps.
3 Likes
Yeah, my own Twitter account is weird in that it does have zero followers, zero posts, zero replies… yet if I see an account like mine that’s following someone, I usually feel pretty certain it is a bot.
Before I had an account, I had long been browsing people’s posts on Twitter, manually bookmarking accounts I liked, and I only set up an account, back before Elno took over, because it was the only way I could see older posts in people’s feeds. So it’s completely empty - I don’t post, follow, have any likes, or have anything in my account except a growing block list. If someone has an account like mine, which is already anomalous, yet they’re also following some accounts? Almost certainly a bot.
2 Likes
Remember when our friend Musk’s primary objective was to buy twitter in order to rid it of the bots? Yeah, well, he can’t even do that right.
5 Likes
That’s what he said, but that was not his actual goal. His actions since he’s taken over the company reveal the lie.
7 Likes
I can’t help but think that he is driving away regular people more quickly than he can reinstate Nazis. The percentage of bots (which was high before Elno bought it) goes up when you drive the people away.
4 Likes
