THE traffic one gets in Twitter is rapidly decreasing, based not only on my own experience (as alluded to in the video above) but also the experiences of friends whom I regularly speak to. Some of them only get about 10% the "engagement" they got 5-10 years ago. Social control media is in general a bit of a bubble; it was a thing back in the days, but people shift over to things like TikTok at YouTube's expense, looking for a new experience (under Alphabet it became like television, there's no "You" in YouTube) and Facebook keeps buying companies in an effort to stay relevant. Jack Dorsey's departure from his leadership role isn't due to some scandal; it is likely based on what he's seeing and not telling shareholders. It's not often that we see founders leaving their 'baby' (see "India-born Parag Agrawal replaces Jack Dorsey as Twitter CEO"; "Twitter’s Jack Dorsey Steps Down From C.E.O. Role"; "Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to leave social media company"; "New Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is central to Jack Dorsey's plans to revamp social media") unless that baby has slim chances of surviving.

"The media rarely discusses those sorts of issues because it has a stake in the status quo."As we'll note in the next batch of Daily Links (outline above), Twitter's founder and chief is stepping down. Most of Twitter's history was just endless losses and lawsuits, including a lawsuit from shareholders (over Twitter faking its popularity). In recent years Twitter raised money from criminals in exchange for reputation laundering and it had actually made a bit of money for a few years by giving a platform to extremists who spread hate and misinformation.

Regardless of factors like audience size, we're increasingly refocusing and shifting emphasis to self-hosting (IRC, videos, textual publication etc.) while adopting simpler protocols. Twitter became JavaScript-only about a year ago (almost as bad as having a Flash site) and YouTube did the same around the same time if not earlier. From Web pages they've moved to "web" "apps" and from social they've moved to social control. This isn't what the open Web was about or what the World Wide Web was originally for (when a British scientist based in Switzerland wanted to share his papers over the Internet).

The media rarely discusses those sorts of issues because it has a stake in the status quo. Any shift or change is very expensive to those who are accustomed to being the centre of attention. ⬆