From my point of view, Twitter could go to Hell, I wouldn't give a damn.

I don't need it for my work, I don't need it to get knowledge, I'm cynical enough to believe people you meet online are not friends but acquaintances at best, and when I want to contact my family, I can use phone, SMS and mails.

Twitter is an echo chamber for rumours, propaganda, narcissism and hate speeches. I don't consider its contribution to the human kind as positive.

== Bring us Dabbsy back! ==

I think of it as a great source of entertainment, sort of like the red top newspapers in the UK used to be 40 years ago. There is some truth there, but mostly exageration, sensationlism, shock tactics etc. Oh, and a lot of funny stuff, but that is available from many other places.

If, however, you want to argue with a pig then dive right in, you will come out very muddy and maybe eventually realise that the pig likes it (old but good).

p.s. keep Dabbsy in the sea for me.....

I can't see any reason to use Twitter to talk to friends or family when there are closed chat networks (WhatsApp, Signal, Messages, etc...) that do the job better and don't broadcast your message to the world if you use the wrong setting/option.

So you came here to offer an uninformed opinion on a topic of no interest to you. Sounds like you should sign up to twitter.

I wouldn't call it 'uninformed', he believes he's informed about zero value of social media, at least in his own context.

The biggest problem here is that you are giving giant evil twat Elon Musk $8/mo to help save his disastrous 'Oh shite I bought WHAT while stoned?' purchase, and enabling him to continue being an enormous stupid troll.

I have some sympathy to the idea that user's pay for social media in exchange for not selling PI to the highest bidder, although there is no way to verify that would be honored. So, nah!

> although there is no way to verify that would be honored. So, nah!

Unless you read the terms and conditions, that is.

The problem that does remain is that of repressive governments, particularly western ones, forcing the company to give them your data. Take for instance Poland or Spain (if you follow EU legal news).

If you'd seen all the Twitter money making schemes Musk is spewing in all directions (like turning it into a lender, since that worked for him with merging with Paypal) you'd know that selling your PI is not first on the list, but is definitely up there. Your PI will be sold. Musk would grind you, live puppies and live kittens into bloodmeal if it were profitable.

And terms and conditions don't meant a thing to him. He's already repeatedly violated the promises, laws, and corporate policies with his employees.

For an article that is a) clearly labeled as opinion, b) doesn't get on the bandwagon of "let's trash Twitter because rich guy bought it / I hate change / etc.", c) points out that there's at least a recognition of its social impact and value with the new management, and d) explains how and why it's useful to journalists.

NB: I'm not and never been a Twitter user. I don't support "journalism by Twitter copy & paste" (which is not the case here anyway). But I find that much of the current bad press is unwarranted if not downright malicious and welcome a contrarian view, as it were.

Simon is a good sport. Also, it may make business sense for a journal/ist. For a politician or organization with multitudes of followers, it's an absolute no brainer - provided the Twitter itself is not hostile or even unsafe for that politician and their followers - i.e. anon identities are kept confidential.

For some reason, the billionaire friend of Putin really doesn't want people to know they're replying to or DMing the Internet Research Agency.

Imagine how fewer rocket blow-ups in SpaceX or Tesla car crashes there would have been if someone normal were in charge.

Imagine how fewer rocket blow-ups in SpaceX or Tesla car crashes there would have been if someone normal were in charge.

There would be 0 of each... because they wouldn't exist, because normal people wouldn't get around to it. Sometimes nutters are useful.

How much govt money has Boeing spent so far on Starliner? And how many SLS launches have there been?

Yeah, ok. Some of the best innovation has happened as part of private enterprise. Sadly we now have a very large group of people who think that only governments can do things.

> A modest monthly contribution to a site that's a big part of my personal and professional lives is an investment worth testing.

Says the person who has been using it for 15 years.

8USD/month is pretty much $1500 over that period. I wonder if they would pay that as an up-front amount for the next 15 years?

I've spent thousands and thousands on newspapers paying a little sum every day. Would I pay them upfront for the next thirty years? Of course not, that's not how it works.

$100 a year is a trivial amount to spend for a business, SME or a solopreneur / creative artist etc for market access to millions of potential clients

"Says the person who has been using it for 15 years."

...and who therefore presumably has 15 years of actual experience to make a well-informed statement on the matter.

What happens when a verified user kicks the mortal bucket?

he gets a refund?

Another baked-in flaw of social media is that its users – to borrow from Oscar Wilde – know the price of it is zero but don't understand its value.

That's not true. We fully understand its value. The value is that it leverages the billions of free content provided for free by its users to get advertisers in.

As soon as you start paying for a service the relationship changes. I'm happy to feed the beast because it costs me nothing, however start charging and I want to know what am I getting for that., is there a guaranteed level of service, can you ensure that abuse will be dealt with promptly, etc. I am no longer a user, I am now a customer.

I don't have a blue tick, nor would I want one, never mind pay for the privilege. My fear is that paying for something that before was before a mark of respect and authority will cheapen it to the point it has no value and only those with fragile ego's and the desire to impose their world view will use it.

Bit like getting a peerage....

I guess the $8/mth is to prove to a potential audience of millions that you are who you say you are. I'm pretty sure they could add a separate subscription level where you pay $x/mth not to bug you with adverts etc

Perhaps he should charge more for guaranteed anonymous accounts

It's an unfair auction because only the advertisers know how much the other side is prepared to pay and, sooner or later, they always win: see Netflix.

Think about Twitter's value?

I've had ample opportunity to buy into using Twitter by now, but although I set up an account to play with once, I found absolutely zero appeal in the "service."

Twitter is like any number of "legacy" bands; highly overrated just because they've been around a while.

Twitter has value because of the number of people who use Twitter. Using Twitter and paying $8/month both add value to Twitter. Twitter does several things, perhaps some that you support and some that you don't. I think that balance is going to change. If some of the things Twitter did had value to you then the time to consider a plan B was last month. For some, the evidence of the direction Twitter is going was sufficient to jump ship last week despite any negative consequences. If you want to wait and see then that is your purgative (not a miss spelling - I believe that seeing for themselves what Musk intends Twitter to become will cause vomiting among many of the remaining supporters).

Our little organisation has around 700 followers and slowly rising. Twitter helps us gain some international interaction in our niche not-for-profit activity. Similarly for our YouTube channel which has around 1100 subscribers.

They're free to use and helpful. I doubt if paid for advertising would achieve better results. They lead to some IRL activity which helps us do what we do.

Neither of them have any personal information. I'm very happy. But then I don't see either as an opportunity to share my erudition and insight with fellow echo chamber residents

The only way to fix Twitter is to charge 5p to reply to a tweet. Each and every time you reply to a tweet.

That would fix absolutely everything with the platform.

Does not need to be that much. 0.01p per tweet would pretty well kill bots

I'm thinking more along the lines of those wankers who go out of their way to be nasty to other people. The racists, the misogynists, the homophobic football gobshites that infest the place.

5p a tweet is nothing much really to begin with, but it soon mounts up when they're being vile. And at least then it might give police a vector in order to find these bastards more efficiently and sort them out properly.

this is THE business model in mass-media though. I regularly see media (feeding off each other, and the chain is several feeders long, across different countries and languages, where it ends with the bleeding obvious 'garbage out'. While this has become so much easier these days, it has always been so, i.e. one stone, perhaps two, creating ripple effect. It's like any propagation, you can stop the process, but only in theory, because in real world, there's always somebody out there for higher profit (more growth), lesser morals, less scruples, more fuckyou all. It's race to the bottom, but there is no bottom. Now, you're saying...