[HN Gopher] The end of tweeted articles
___________________________________________________________________
The end of tweeted articles
Author : jger15
Score : 136 points
Date : 2023-09-14 15:28 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.houseofstrauss.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.houseofstrauss.com)
| jseliger wrote:
| I (used to) use Twitter to find interesting things to read and
| save to Instapaper, but, because of the recent turn down in link
| virality, Twitter is considerably worse for that. Substack Notes
| is better for it, but I can't tell if Substack applies a hit to
| links from other sources (Wordpress, whatever).
| m3kw9 wrote:
| X is trying to move content from outside to inside, hence
| deprioritized link posts, increasing the word limit 100x and
| sharing revenue. The sharing revenue is 2 fold, one is to give
| X content creators higher priority and 2 to incentivize content
| to be created on X.
| pests wrote:
| The rev share has been inconsistent and unreliable though.
| nikodunk wrote:
| What an excellent, well thought out piece of writing!! Wonderful.
| I'm glad I found it on hacker news, and will now repost it onto
| mastodon. The rest of the social world be damned.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Hmm... virality isn't dying, the idea of measuring it from a
| single, centralized authority like Twitter is.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Twitter addicts are strange. The attention economy is important,
| but it is also broadly fractured. Getting loads of clicks all of
| a sudden never really meant that much.
| croisillon wrote:
| I have been a twitter addict since months before i finally
| subscribed, back in 2013. From time to time I would try to stop
| but never longer than a few days. Now I went cold turkey with
| Musk takeover and I don't really miss it at all.
|
| Humans are strange.
| igor47 wrote:
| Yeah the article has the line:
|
| > The attention economy is the real economy
|
| Which is exactly what I would expect a journalist to say...
| someone addicted to the loads of clicks. Maybe it matters more
| if getting loads of clicks is your job? Maybe it really is real
| power? I feel both skeptical and fomo.
| christiangenco wrote:
| The game of any platform is to attract and keep more attention on
| the platform.
|
| More advanced platforms will be better at this than less
| developed platforms.
|
| Content that causes users to leave your platform is, from the
| perspective of the platform, worse content than content that
| keeps users engaged in your platform.
|
| Articles on X don't go viral as much as they used to on Twitter?
| That certainly makes conceptual sense because consuming an
| article involves leaving the platform. If you'd like that same
| content to perform better on X then "tailor your messaging to the
| medium" by breaking up the ideas from the article into a series
| of tweets.
|
| That's the game. If you don't like it then play a different game.
| raydev wrote:
| Pre-Elon Twitter was arguably the last major social media site
| that actually supported some subset of the "open web" people
| like to reminisce about here. Articles had the possibility of
| going viral because the old Twitter didn't downrank external
| links so heavily, and even encouraged it with the ability to
| view all quote tweets (another feature X just disabled).
|
| And now it's gone. I think it's fine to mourn that.
| okeuro49 wrote:
| > Pre-Elon Twitter was arguably the last major social media
| site that actually supported some subset of the "open web"
| people like to reminisce about here.
|
| Unless you disagreed with its politics. In which case you
| were suspended, or shadowbanned. This has been well covered
| by Michael Shellenberger and others.
| hn_acker wrote:
| > Unless you disagreed with its politics. In which case you
| were suspended, or shadowbanned.
|
| I would appreciate an example about what kinds of political
| posts Twitter banned. Pre-Elon Twitter did suspend
| Republicans more than Democrats, but that was because
| Republicans tended to post more misinformation [1].
|
| Tangentially speaking, Twitter also gave rule-breaking
| posts regarding the January 6th, 2021 insurrection a bit of
| leeway [2].
|
| [1] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/18/fascinating-new-
| study-su...
|
| [2] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/29/internal-twitter-
| video-r...
| okeuro49 wrote:
| Somewhat ironically for a post talking about
| misinformation, the first link that you use to support
| your claim links to a study that says "this study has not
| yet been published in a peer reviewed journal".
| slily wrote:
| You'd think that piles of concrete evidence would end the
| denialism, but it seems that people aligned with those
| politics don't consider stories like the Twitter Files to
| be real oddly enough. I'm not sure if it's _because_
| mainstream media outlets didn 't cover it, but there's a
| correlation.
| adql wrote:
| I feel you're looking at twitter from 5-10 years ago and
| pretend it was exactly like that pre-Elon.
|
| Twitter months pre-Elon was pretty hard on steering the
| public discussion away from things Twitter didn't want
| raydev wrote:
| Ignoring that the major media orgs were still able to post
| links without being completely blackholed, Substacks and
| other blogs were still prominent and viral at the time as
| well. "Steering public discussion" is only partly related,
| which is why I said "some subset".
|
| Now there is practically _nothing_ on the algo feed that
| links out of X.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It is in tension with the revenue model that is explicitly
| about driving people offsite.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| It used to be that the selling prop for a lot of sites was
| "we'll send you away, but you'll come back every day because we
| always have a variety of interesting places to send you." In
| the early days of blogs, The Atlantic would link to other
| sites, for example, and the Verge is doing it now with their
| new HP. As social media took over, homepages died, so it didn't
| make sense to link to a post at blog B from your blog A because
| no one reads your blog A anymore, they just see some of your
| Tweets. At this point, the social media giants have changed
| their algorithms to try to retain more engagement and compete
| with Tik Tok (which never sends users off platform), but I
| think in the long run they will fail because there will always
| be more interesting stuff somewhere else than on your site.
| Retric wrote:
| Getting people to play _the platforms game_ is why they end up
| paying content creators. Twitter recently started paying people
| per message specifically because they don't want all
| monetization to happen off platform.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| Counter point: reddit
|
| They literally send you away to read the article, but with the
| hope you come back to add comments.
|
| In the case of the new twitter, it makes sense to prevent
| people from leaving the platform, since Musk wants his platform
| to replace everything, blogs (hence new unlimited size tweets),
| YouTube (unlimited length video) and he even talked about a
| currency.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/26/23808796/elon-musks-x-eve...
| [deleted]
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Do people really read the article? It's a meme that nobody
| reads the article. Did you read this article? I didn't.
| xwdv wrote:
| I don't read most articles. And most articles posted on HN
| have famously low read rates of probably sub 1%.
|
| I read _comments_. Comments are the last bastion of pure
| ideas exchange, articles are just pretty conversation
| starters.
| nostromo wrote:
| This is a very dated view of Reddit.
|
| I just visited Reddit in incognito mode.
|
| Of the top 20 posts, 3 were links to articles. Most were
| images, videos, or text posts -- very similar to Twitter.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| The way to use reddit is to use https://old.reddit.com AND
| unsubscribe from everything + subscribe to the specific
| subreddits you are interested in.
| xeromal wrote:
| That's the power user route but we're address the
| business model of reddit which is slowly inhousing all
| content.
| piaste wrote:
| Counter-counter point: for years Reddit has been pushing for
| fewer article links and more locally hosted content.
|
| They started hosting their own images, then their own videos.
| This is expensive to do, but perhaps they felt that it was
| worth it to keep users on their site instead of risking them
| wandering off to Imgur.
|
| And the new design discourages actually reading the article.
| When you click on a "link", it sends you to the comment page
| which has a small embedded thumbnail and blurb. (The old
| design took you to the article directly).
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Yeah, there are a larger number of communities that
| outright ban link posts now, and others which have a pretty
| strict guideline against any articles (labeling them as
| 'blogspam' or 'self-promotion' even when something is
| not... it's a tough job though because spam is incredibly
| frequent now).
| joelfried wrote:
| Counter-counter-counter point: Reddit reached its heyday
| under the leadership that allowed people to leave and come
| back to discuss. Its current leadership has intentionally
| driven away a decent percentage of users within the last
| year.
|
| I do not think their decisions come from sound thinking but
| greed. They don't truly understand why they got big and now
| they're trying to squeeze all the money out of it they can
| before their luck runs out.
|
| I think they did much better trying to give their users a
| good experience and they are in the process of killing the
| goose that laid the golden eggs. It just takes a long time
| for a zombie social network to die.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Counter-counter-counter point
|
| (tangent) Does this remind anyone else of Melissa
| Peterson from Seattle, WA?
|
| [0] https://www.wnyc.org/story/1421-my-dog-hates-you-too/
| thih9 wrote:
| Note that most popular content on reddit is images, short
| video clips or plaintext; and the majority of that is hosted
| on their servers.
| [deleted]
| mattferderer wrote:
| I've been enjoying watching the app Artifact progress -
| https://artifact.news
|
| It's been a news aggregation app so far but with some nice
| features (article summary, read aloud, reader mode).
|
| They just launched the ability to submit your own links. I have
| not tried it but it sounds like it may bring back things people
| liked about Delicious, Google Reader, old Reddit.
|
| I mention this as I personally enjoy this platform as a way to
| consume content quickly. The article summary is very similar to
| Hacker News comments, I view that first & see if I want to
| read/listen the actual article.
| eggbrain wrote:
| Outside of the fact that a platform will always selfishly want to
| prioritize its own content and keep users on its platform, I feel
| there is a growing sentiment from web users as well that most
| content-based websites are just _bad_, and platforms are adapting
| to this behavior.
|
| Over the past few years, how many times have you:
|
| - Searched Google for something like "Best Coffee Maker" / "STORE
| coupon codes" / "Best cocktail recipie" and the article was just
| an SEO'd affiliate link blogspam?
|
| - Searched Twitter for something innocuous only for the top links
| to be some sort of crypto or OnlyFans garbage?
|
| - Clicked into a website just for 1-3 visual modals to popup to
| "Disable your Adblock" / "Sign up for our mailing list" / "Login
| to view the rest of the post" (And we thought popups were dead
| once popup blockers became a thing)
|
| This article is even an example -- I scroll down just to be
| interrupted by a call to action modal requesting my email and
| making me find the "continue reading" button just to read the
| content.
|
| Platforms provide content consistency -- once users understand
| the platform, they can know how to consume content on it.
|
| It's perhaps the death of the open web, but I kind of get it.
| [deleted]
| ploum wrote:
| [flagged]
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Isn't Mysterious Twitter X curbing "virality" of mainstream media
| propaganda a good thing?
| moomin wrote:
| The way I see it, Twitter was one of the last sites standing in
| the content curation game. Reddit's great, but balkanised. HN
| itself is pretty good and broader but Twitter was the best
| product I used for kicking up stuff from around the web I might
| actually find worthwhile reading. Now it's lost that function.
|
| Was it a good business decision? No idea. But it's made the
| product worse from this consumer's perspective.
| strbean wrote:
| LUELinks/ ETI is kind of like Reddit without the balkanization,
| right?
|
| IIUC, instead of subs you have tags, but tags have moderators
| and communities around them. Kind of like crossposting, but
| with a common comment section and no duplication.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| We're all on goodreads
| djbusby wrote:
| There's been some recent fuzz on HN about Goodreads too. Is
| it September over there too?
| afandian wrote:
| Has been for what seems like forever.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| It's like the fall of Rome. Historians will debate, when
| did it really start? When did it finally fall? Did it
| ever fall at all?
|
| It always has been September, always will be, and never
| was at all; everywhere and nowhere.
| [deleted]
| afandian wrote:
| Walking is just controlled falling.
| ljm wrote:
| I've been reverting back to RSS and using Pocket as an interim
| solution (pocket-reader in emacs is really nice and converts
| well-formed articles into markdown, with the help of pandoc).
|
| I want to host my own RSS server though and then maybe use a
| native reader to view it, like an RSS of RSS feeds. I don't
| want to pay an RSS feed company to host that for me and
| generate ad targeting from it.
|
| The reason is that I want to be in control of the content I
| consume, and I'm not in control if an engagement algorithm is
| emotionally manipulating me.
| pwenzel wrote:
| I've been using ReadKit for Mac for several years. It's just
| an old-school native feed reader app, no services required!
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I want to host my own RSS server though and then maybe use
| a native reader to view it, like an RSS of RSS feeds.
|
| I've been using Tiny Tiny RSS to do this for years. It works
| very well. https://tt-rss.org/
| destroy-2A wrote:
| I use stringer https://github.com/stringer-rss/stringer
|
| I self host on docker been running reliably for a few years
| without issue.
| neets wrote:
| I used to use Pocket, then migrated to Pinboard, and now use
| Raindrop.
|
| I like Raindrop because it has both golder and tags, plus the
| folders can be shared.
|
| For example here is a list of tools I have curated over the
| years, https://raindrop.io/dentropy/tools-31378381
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Depends on the consumer I suppose. It seems more vibrant,
| useful, and interesting than ever before at the moment.
| jahnu wrote:
| Can you give some examples of before and after? Don't see it
| myself. I confess I gave up on it once Musk started pushing
| racists like Tucker Carlson so this may colour my view.
| bradgessler wrote:
| The interesting thing about Xitter was the massive reach it
| offered over other social networks. So many people on there
| have Xeeted, "I can't believe this site is free!". I think this
| lead to other effects like news networks spending half their
| time covering what people are Xeeting instead of actual news.
| This no doubt made Xitter as possible as it is today.
|
| I have two big questions about the future of Xitter.
|
| 1. Corporate media seems to want to destroy Musk, especially
| since he bought the social network they invested and depended
| on so heavily. Does this effectively remove Xitter from the
| center of public discourse? How will this impact Xitter usage?
|
| 2. Everything seems to be trending towards, "pay for reach",
| which makes it look more like all other social networks. While
| its certainly possible to build a successful business on this
| model as Facebook, LinkedIn, and other massive social networks
| have been done, will Xitter deliver other benefits that are
| more compelling than competing social networks beyond "lots of
| reach"?
|
| From my point of view Xitter seems to be going in the direction
| of being another ad company. Reducing reach, hiring a CEO from
| the ad industry, and adding paywalls for subscriptions, etc.
| are all signals that tell me to start looking for a different
| watering hole.
|
| What will be that next watering hole that gives away an absurd
| amount of reach in exchange for a relatively modest amount of
| revenue and corporate media coverage?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Does this effectively remove Xitter from the center of
| public discourse?
|
| I honestly don't think that Twitter was ever the "center of
| public discourse". At its peak, it was used by a bit more
| than 20% of people in the US, far below the likes of
| Facebook.
| bradgessler wrote:
| There was a streak where it seemed like every other story
| corporate media (CNN, Foxnews, etc) covered was a Tweet
| that some prominent person published. That's what I mean by
| being at the center of public discourse.
|
| Compare that to Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., which never
| really achieved that level of press coverage.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| > Xitter...Xeeted...Xitter
|
| Could you please please please stop with that it just
| sounds/reads horrible (and it is also wrong if you talk about
| the past where people still at least tweeted, and it will
| also be wrong for the future where people will be Xing on X,
| if anything, yeah still sounds horrible).
| aeturnum wrote:
| Without pretending the previous Twitter owners were flawless,
| I do think they had a respect for the "magic" of the site and
| took care to not damage it too badly. One thing that's been
| striking about watching Musk talk about Twitter is how...few
| of his views about what makes the website enjoyable or
| special are shared by other Twitter veterans. For better or
| worse Musk is going in a different direction and I think this
| blog captures one way that's happening.
| guestbest wrote:
| MySpace and Facebook used to make users enter CAPTCHAs in order
| to allow them to follow a link and leaves the site with warning
| banners anyway, so it is part of a social network's DNA to keep
| users onsite
| harles wrote:
| Don't forget about integrated browsers in apps. Gmail,
| Facebook, and I'm sure a million other apps do this so even
| when you leave, you're still in their app.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| It's simple, links are deprioritized in the main home feed, which
| suggests the home feed is where things go viral now. It's where
| Elon gets control, but you should be able to know from the open
| source algorithm how it is deprioritized
| pests wrote:
| was the algorithm ever released or just the scale analytics
| code?
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| You have to wonder what comes next.
|
| The act of killing virality for long form content leads to a
| reduction in its production.
|
| Then what? Do the deep and important, but not world shattering,
| stories stop being told?
| avrionov wrote:
| Every website looks like TikTok now.
| munificent wrote:
| There was plenty of "long form content" being produced for
| hundreds of years before the invention of social media. We
| called them books.
|
| I think long form content will be fine.
| bjt wrote:
| Books are one example on the spectrum of types of content
| here. They're not enough on their own. A book is a poor
| source for an in-depth look at pending legislation, for
| example.
|
| Essays, short stories, deep investigative news stories, etc.
| also all fall into the "long form" bucket. A lot of those had
| their natural homes in magazines and newspapers, and those
| have taken huge hits as people's attention has turned to
| short, viral, online things instead.
| joewferrara wrote:
| This article is a lot of words about the fact that twitter, or
| should I say X, is promoting tweets, er posts, that keep one on X
| (posts without a link in them, the example given in the article
| is posts with pictures) instead posts that send one away from X
| (posts that consist of a link promoting something on an external
| website, which used to have the ability to go viral greatly
| helping the owner/author of what's on the external website).
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| The article is roughly 1,500 words.. If that is a lot to you, I
| guess it just means you probably like twitter these days!
| earthboundkid wrote:
| I dunno, I also found it sort of rambling and not getting to
| the point of its thesis.
| golergka wrote:
| As a user, I'd much prefer a concise tweet instead of a huge
| article with the same exact point. So, I guess Musk's Twitter
| actually improves my experience.
| thih9 wrote:
| What if it's impossible to present that point in a post on X?
|
| E.g. because it's too complex, or because the author doesn't
| post on X, or for some other reason.
| SamBam wrote:
| Some people just want to live in a world of sound-bites and
| hot-takes.
|
| They're also the sorts of people who believe most books
| should be replaced by a paragraph-long summary.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Unfortunately now you can pay to have your tweets be huge-
| article sized.
| [deleted]
| f33d5173 wrote:
| Its hardly surprising that an image would get more engagement
| than would an article. While an image has less meat to it, by the
| same token it requires less effort to engage with it. You look at
| the image, think for a second, then possibly retweet or like.
| With an article, you can hardly engage with it without following
| a link, reading some number of paragraphs, reflecting on them,
| etc. I would consider it quite natural that images and articles
| get roughly corresponding amounts of engagement. That this was
| the absolute level of analysis was quite disapointing. Besides
| trying to evaluate in more depth the viral capability of links
| today, I would have expected a comparison with days past. I can
| hardly, having read this article, confidently say that elon is
| trying to kill external links.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Twitter will not even allow you to unsubscribe from their emails
| anymore unless you log into their platform. I'm not sure of the
| details, but isn't that a violation of the CAN-SPAM act?
| carlossouza wrote:
| > If your goal is visibility, you are well advised to tailor your
| messaging to the medium. That means skewing to the visual and
| away from the linked article.
|
| Isn't that obvious?
| Given_47 wrote:
| Yea I like Strauss but this was a bit strange. He doesn't seem
| to understand the profile and iq of the average Twitter user
| and the type that drives "virality." Additionally one can
| immediately engage with an image (which is why every stupid
| engagement optimizing account would tweet with images), reading
| an external piece takes more work
| raydev wrote:
| > He doesn't seem to understand the profile and iq of the
| average Twitter user and the type that drives "virality."
|
| There was still an enormous (and arguably self-sustaining)
| population of "readers".
| PaulHoule wrote:
| One of those filters I want to apply to Mastodon is "images
| with text", that is, it is frequently a screenshot of an X
| (yuck!) or some inflammatory message that I won't repeat.
| People do click on them though which is what makes them so
| annoying.
| Given_47 wrote:
| Haha, there's that meme about five websites or so that r
| just screenshots of the other websites.
|
| And yea it enables those stupid posts so I try to refrain
| from engaging
| hyperpape wrote:
| No, because it wasn't always true for Twitter. Twitter made a
| choice to change how it rewarded pictures vs. links, and it
| happened surprisingly late.
| Given_47 wrote:
| When was this? Sometime in the last couple of years?
| raydev wrote:
| Images/videos were definitely boosted/prioritized, but
| external links _also_ used to go viral pre-Elon, even a bit
| after he took over. Remember how mad he got about Substack?
|
| Now all external links are effectively blackholed from the
| algo feed. It's a massive change.
| hyperpape wrote:
| I can't confidently say, but the article suggests it's
| post-Elon.
| Given_47 wrote:
| Ok was just wondering because anecdotally images have
| been a staple of engagement optimizing posts/accounts.
| E.g. something like ESPN won't post a minute clip of an
| interview or simply a transcript excerpt, it's always a
| quote graphic with an animated expression of the athlete.
| Some fairly mundane quote from Tom Brady will instead
| include a picture of him yelling
| raydev wrote:
| No, because as recently as just last year, Twitter didn't
| downrank external links so heavily. Viral articles were
| possible last year.
| Given_47 wrote:
| Yea I'd imagine the feed change and Twitter fully embracing
| low effort memes and jokes for its "virality" effect were a
| big factor
| jachee wrote:
| The article seems to miss (or perhaps ignore?) the fact that
| there has been an incredibly _massive_ exodus from formerly-
| twitter. There just literally aren't as many people around to see
| /share things, which is also a contributing factor to not going
| viral.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Citation needed
| Tao3300 wrote:
| You only need to look up.
| throw14092023 wrote:
| There hasn't been an exodus at all. Not in any significant way.
| Even the journalists praising Mastodon in November 2022, have
| since returned to Twitter 1) because they are addicts 2)
| because not Mastodon, nor Bluesky, nor Threads, nor any other
| alternative is there yet, and probably never will.
|
| I'm not really invested in this debate beause I honestly don't
| care, just saying that you shouldn't lose touch with reality.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> I 'm not really invested in this debate beause I honestly
| don't care_
|
| The irony of caring so much that one goes to the trouble of
| registering a brand-new HN account solely to tell people how
| little they care?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Sure, but even if users dropped significantly, they're
| reporting a drop of multiple magnitudes for the most successful
| articles. An algorithmic change seems more likely than user
| activity dropping.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| TLDR: social media shops are increasingly following the walled
| garden strategy. From an information searching viewpoint, this is
| fairly negative as search engines may eventually lose the ability
| to index the content in these walled gardens - and for some
| reason(control of what users get to see?), the in-house search
| capabilities of social media sites tend to be really terrible,
| see the whole Reddit API fiasco for example that eliminated all
| the good independent search tools for that site.
|
| As far as X / Substack:
|
| > "Substack this year and last directly targeted Twitter with
| launches of both a short-form Notes that looked a lot like
| Twitter as well as a chat feature that moved conversations off
| social media to its own platform. In response, Twitter stopped
| allowing users to retweet, like, or reply to tweets with Substack
| links. It makes sense that Twitter would now take on Substack
| with a long-form content distribution feature of its own..."
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/18/twitter-to-support-long-fo...
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