General Discussion
Showing Original Post only (View all)Are DUers migrating away from Twitter? [View all]
As someone who's been mostly reading DU closely for 21 years now, I've been disturbed (especially since 2015) about the rise of DU threads whose only OP content has been a twitter post with no commentary from the OP. I believe such posts act as an echo-chamber amplifier and tended to prioritize a single narrow corporate platform over others in a way that linking YouTube videos, for example, doesn't quite do.
IMHO twitter was always entirely about impulsive mob behavior, and the new owner clearly thinks he has purchased an impulsive mob megaphone. I'm afraid he ignored he was purchasing direct access to a vigorous diverse community, and as MySpace owners can tell you, communities have other places they can move when their access gets purchased and their diversity so reduced.
I continue to use DU mostly as a news aggregator because crowdsourcing makes for an effective screening resource. The firehose is harsh but I like to stay informed. As someone who doesn't always donate (I'm elderly and choose to rotate my donations among several sites), I'm in no position to give advice to others here old or new.
I am enormously gratified to read more Mastodon links, but would love to see more commentary from each OP about why they posted the link. A post lacking comment from the OP tells a reader less than the poster would like.
In any case, thank you DU for helping make informed choices, at least since Denis Kucinich was winning all the primary polls here.
Thank you DUers (old and new) for helping some of us in flyover territory stay out of the dark.