The slow, sad death of Twitter
Elon Musk has hollowed out the social network just as a vital election cycle approaches
www.theneweuropean.co.uk
Old Twitter did that: there was a curated timeline of well-liked tweets, a chronological timeline, and the display of replies was weighted by how many people had liked a given response. Browsing the replies to a viral meme would regularly show up lots of riffs on the theme, and be a worthwhile use of time.
Prioritising blue tick content has broken all of these. Most Twitter users barely tweet and don’t care about followers – a “heavy user” tweets on average less than three times a week. So if someone is posting regularly enough to be willing to pay $8 a month for a blue tick, but has not built up a sizeable following organically, this is a very strong signal that the posts they are producing are no good.
It is exactly that content that Twitter’s new model relies on promoting – and those newly-minted blue ticks are quickly learning that there is no magic behind the checkmarks. New followers are not magically heading their way. The problem wasn’t a biased liberal algorithm, it was that their tweets are no good.
That means lots of blue ticks stop paying – but everyone else is forced to read the low-quality content that the remaining blue ticks produce. This is what is powering the enshittification of Twitter.
Oooof, absolutely bodying blue tick buyers.