But is it a simpler way of exchanging long protein strings?
This. When there’s a severe weather warning, it’s pushed directly to my smartphone.
And, the village where I live has an opt-in SMS messaging system, which allows them to text me when there’s an alert.
One doesn’t need Twitter for that, and the first system above works for everyone with a smartphone, not those who are following their local government on Twitter, or have signed up for SMS alerts.
Twitter isn’t (wasn’t) valuable because of the mechinism to share information. It is (was) valuable because of the vast number of people who chose to use it to share information.
I use Twitter to follow a large collection of journalists and people I find interesting. If I didn’t use Twitter, I’d be paying a huge amount of money to subscribe to the various newspapers and distributors those journalists work for, and spend a huge amount of time going to the various websites they post their content on.
Twitter is an aggregator of information that you want. If you don’t want to read tweets from the Kardashians, then simply don’t follow the Kardashians. Lately there have been a lot of ads, and there’s a “For You” feed that is algorithmically created, but you can turn that feed off.
Yeah, same as Facebook.
Not useful to me personally, because I’m a verbose windbag and I have very little to say that fits easily into Tweet-sized morsels. Also don’t care for the kind of conversations that short choppy comments tends to facilitate. But first and foremost, if you want to communicate, you have to use the medium that other people also use. Shouting your thoughts into an echoing cave — even a really good cave with the very best stalactites — just isn’t gonna get you anywhere.
I was convinced Twitter would lead to the downfall of mankind because by its nature, users are encouraged to condense to short-attention span content, eroding their ability to conceive things in the long term, making them blind to the bigger picture because it’s tl/dr. It was just going to be a mass of visceral screaming, eventually leading to casualties.
Then January 6th happened, the legions of the undiagnosed obeying the rantings of the world’s most gigantic crybaby. NEED I SAY MORE???
Somebody used to post Jucika comic strips there.
Now that Musk changed things, I can’t see the top page.
BTW–no Twitter account, & never will have one.
Anybody know where I can get a daily dose of Jucika, without supporting a Weirdo CEO?
I am quite active on Twitter. As far as what those damn kids do on Twitter, I can point out that it is used by a lot of academics. #EconTwitter was a great place for me to keep on top of what’s going on in the world of academic economics which would be pretty hard to so considering I am just a nobody with an Econ undergraduate degree, but remain fascinated by the subject
The local schools use twitter exclusively to announce weather related school closings. That is important information to have for parents but a vast amount of people without school aged children would not want their phones’ EAS going off early in the morning for that.
The past four schools I’ve been involved with have all used a text messaging system for things like that. That way, it gets out to all of the parents, not just those parents who are on Twitter (and remember, even though Twitter is (was) one of the single largest social media platforms, it’s still only a fairly small percentage of the population who use it).
…we aren’t just talking about “emergency alerts.” Its about real-time updates. “Hobart Road is closed due to flooding.” “We’ve opened up Thistle Hall for people that need to evacuate.” That kind of thing. They use Facebook as well, These obviously aren’t the only tools. But emergency services should avail themselves of all the means of communicating with people. Emergency alerts, their website, social media, and the media itself.
And they are especially important when the official channels fall over. For example recently in Auckland we had a situation where the Mayor (imagine Trump light) was asleep at the wheel during major flooding. Local community leaders had to step up to co-ordinate rescue and relief efforts until the official emergency declaration was finally made. Having people on the ground Tweeting in real time made a lot of difference.
How did they get the word out to the people that they needed to be following those particular Twitter accounts?
How about … TV and radio, which hasn’t gone away? Plus now the internet? By “internet” in the context of emergency information I mean things like national and local news sites and the well-known sites of government agencies like weather services. I don’t have a Twitter account and don’t plan to ever have one, and I think I’m justified in not feeling that I’m in any immediate peril.
Actually I think the reality is that many Twitter users are in greater peril with regard to their health and safety due to the massive ideologically motivated disinformation that pervades the platform.
I don’t know about anyone else but I already follow all the Twitter accounts of the local emergency services.
I’m on Twitter a lot, and I don’t see any of that. It’s easy to avoid.
…people already follow those Twitter accounts. They used their platforms to reach the tens of thousands of people that followed them, those people then spread that information to people that weren’t following those accounts. There was about five hours during the crisis where there was absolutely no information coming from any of the official sources. People had to go somewhere to find out what was happening.
…we haven’t had a radio in the house since…I honestly don’t remember. And I haven’t watched TV (as in the broadcast networks) for at least five years.
These are all very good. But those services don’t allow you to do this:
https://twitter.com/michaelwoodnz/status/1619436753718493185
That was the (then) Minister of Transport giving real-time traffic update information to a random Twitter user with an ANIMAL avatar. That’s something that you just can’t do with one-way communication. Social media is a different tool used in different ways to mobilise during a disaster.
Sure, but it’s like the world at large – some are astute enough to avoid the crap and the pitfalls and the scams, but it’s still out there. Twitter notoriously encourages that kind of interaction because its currency is short messages supported by nothing, whose credibility is determined solely by the number of “followers” the particular Twit has. Its intrinsic nature is the diametric opposite of the values of responsible media or academic journals, and its primary attribute is that, broadly and generally speaking, nothing you read there can be trusted.
Another difference it can make is when “people on the ground” tweet complete bullshit, either because they believe it (likely because they heard about it from another Twit) or because they’re doing it for a yuk.
I admit regarding both of the above responses that I’m predisposed to a heavy bias against social media in general; I don’t hold Facebook in any higher esteem than Twitter. In fact, until Elmo came along, I thought Zuck ran the worst of the bunch.
…which was one of the reasons why the verification system was so important and why Elmo scrapping it has made all of this more difficult. But even without the verification system, the official channels and the community leaders tend to drown out the disinformation. You were most likely to see this sort of thing going down on TikTok than you were on Twitter. Its just the nature of the platform.
Exactly so (esp in the pre-Elon days when a checkmark meant something). Twitter is also very beneficial when you follow niche interests (which also benefit from reddit, FWIW). So, for instance, even though the local sports media doesn’t give two shits about Major League Soccer, I can quickly find out what is going on in the league by the Twitter folks I follow that cover it.