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The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate

www.salon.com

"They need us. We don't need them:" The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate

"They need us. We don't need them”

19 comments
  • Interesting take. I wonder how it will pan out.

    All this, Ryan said, explains why the trolls "are getting more extreme and desperate." The pool of people available to get attention from is shrinking, so the only way to keep the engagement rates as high is to say wilder and nastier things

    If that happens then it will just implode quite rapidly. Regular users will just leave and that fuels the fire and Twitter just becomes yet another niche right wing echo chamber in no time.

    I do question the claim that 'the trolls are getting more extreme' though. That seems like anecdotal evidence and I wonder if it's actually happening. The author listed many examples of extreme views on Twitter but I could have done the same thing and made the same claim 5 years ago. There has always been loonies on there and some of them get worse and some don't.

  • Naww poor widdle baby's can't scam people as easy now. Does the baby need their binky?

  • Maybe it's just my personal bias aligning with the journalist but it makes me optimistic hearing what feels like an objective take on what's wrong with our society.

  • I think Musk screwed the golden goose on this one. I think he thought his large following would keep the site afloat. Sadly he's just alienated his fans in one way or another over the past handful of years and Twitter users did not like his extreme right-wing pandering.

    He really should just focus on his electric cars and rocket businesses. Sell Twitter's corpse. Sell the other small companies he owns. Sigh...

19 comments