Twitter went private, then it got weird.

I’ve been using twitter since October 2006. That’s not a short amount of time to be using a service. 16 years!

It’s deeply weird to return to what was once called “internet time.” Internet time was what we called the era where brand new web pages or services would pop up and get massively popular overnight. Think about Hot or Note or Nosepilot or Flash games that made the rounds quickly. To see Mastodon suddenly get tons of interest and activity (I joined in December 2021).

This here blog persists.

Instagram seems like it’s felt no impact from the changes.

I suspect Facebook usage numbers have had no change.

Twitter however has been eroding as people try to reckon with what the new owner who took it private thinks the site needs. I’m not sure a $20 $8 per month charge for Twitter verification was what it was crying out for.

Given the Twitter destabilization and the Mastodon growth I’ve been thinking about “Hot Tubbing” a bit. I remember the old Webmonster mailing lists – awesome discussion of web tech in the late 1990s. I think they made some managerial change or structural change — I can’t even remember what it was — but it was enough for a mass exodus to take place and WebDesign-L and Evolt I think were created out of that.

Moderating an online community–which is to say–governing a group of people–is not easy. It’s hard work. The satiric and yet accurate Hey Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run The Content Moderation Learning Curve is an excellent short distillation of just some of the issues any large community faces on 21st century earth.

It’s an interesting time. Which is to say, it’s a mess.