The confusion, especially on X, is caused by focusing on what the loudest dumbest users want vs all else.

> The confusion, especially on X, is caused by focusing on what the loudest dumbest users want vs all else.

I'm not on X, so I don't know, but IME on every other place on the internet since forever is that the loudest, dumbest users ARE the advertisers.

An environment that monetarily rewards users pushing their message into other peoples faces performs an environmental selection to make the advertisers the loudest and dumbest users.

Shilling scams, cosplaying as an influencer or being a bot does not make users an advertiser.

> The confusion, especially on X, is caused by focusing on what advertisers want vs what users want

Is it? Last time I heard about it advertisers were going away because Musk is focusing on what loudest users want (being able to speak loudly) and not what advertisers want (moderation)

I feel like this is a relatively new situation, whereas the parent post describes very well the development of the service over the last decade.

No, Twitter was never especially advertiser focused, although it did do a bit of "brand" stuff. The destruction of Twitter was because as a a "free speech platform" it naturally picked up the most aggressive, nastiest, confrontational politics. It then algorithmically shoved this in front of the people most likely to make retaliatory posts. It is dying because it now focuses on what the owner wants, which is a set of increasingly fringe right wing lunatics and some guy called "catturd2".

Hence getting banned in Brazil. I guarantee that is not an outcome any advertiser wanted.

I still use X and it's still very good. It's tough rn (as it always was) 6 months before the big US election but it'll go back to normal. I've been on twitter since 2011 and it's been the same pattern all these years.

The secret, always is - follow new people in small increments and generously unfollow at the slightest annoyance. There are still lots of interesting people to find!

You'll discover there's people on both sides of political issues who can make their points and not be annoying about it but these are maybe 1-3% of political people. You can also completely ignore politics by being judicious with your unfollows.