{"id":629138,"date":"2023-04-14T09:50:05","date_gmt":"2023-04-14T14:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/14\/how-two-insurgents-are-taking-on-twitter\/"},"modified":"2023-04-14T09:50:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-14T14:50:05","slug":"how-two-insurgents-are-taking-on-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/14\/how-two-insurgents-are-taking-on-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"How two insurgents are taking on Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last week, I observed here that journalists have mostly continued to post on Twitter as if everything is normal there<\/a>. That\u2019s less true today than it was then \u2014 good on NPR<\/a> and PBS<\/a> for showing some spine and suspending their use of the platform \u2014 but there\u2019s no doubt that it continues to be the digital broadcast destination of choice for many or even most reporters.<\/p>\n

As I noted in that piece, one reason for Twitter\u2019s stickiness is the sense that none its alternatives have yet to reach critical mass. And while that\u2019s clearly true, it\u2019s also the case that there is probably more talent working on new social networks at this point than at any moment since the early 2010s.<\/p>\n

Mastodon, Post, T2, and the Untitled Meta Social Network are just a handful of the projects that have begun springing up since Elon Musk\u2019s ill-fated takeover of Twitter last year. And none has yet had the sort of moment that signals an app is breaking through to a large, mainstream audience \u2014 the way BeReal did last summer<\/a>, before quickly petering out<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today I want to look at two different ways that insurgents are attempting to take on Twitter and what they tell us about where Twitter may be vulnerable. It\u2019s a deeper-than-usual dive into how social products get built \u2014 but if you\u2019re the sort of person who wonders, as I do, when we can all be done with Twitter for good, you have to first ask yourself what kind of product could actually succeed in making Twitter irrelevant.<\/p>\n

I.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not every social app breaks through the way BeReal did \u2014 on the basis of its original premise alone. Instagram, for example, began as a more fully featured social network called Burbn<\/a> before its co-founders pivoted to the one experience on the app that seemed to really resonate with people: photo sharing with filters.<\/p>\n

Given Instagram\u2019s eventual success, I\u2019ve been paying close attention to Artifact<\/a> \u2014 Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger\u2019s return to building social products after leaving Meta, Instagram\u2019s acquirer, in 2018.<\/p>\n

Artifact is a news reading app that can be summarized as TikTok for text. It opens to a feed of news stories that are recommended to you based on your interests. And in the two months since it launched, I\u2019ve found that Artifact largely lives up to that promise. It\u2019s rare for me to open the app and not see a story I want to read. Crucially, many of these are stories that I hadn\u2019t seen on Techmeme<\/a> or Twitter; some of them make their way into editions of this newsletter.<\/p>\n

Systrom has planned to integrate social features into Artifact all along; I was part part of a beta test that let some users post links to a public feed, just as you might find on Twitter; I also got early access to a direct messages feature.<\/p>\n

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\u201cFewer and fewer people post over time. And it\u2019s because you feel like you\u2019re performing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But when it came time to make Artifact feel more social, Systrom and his team went in a different direction: as of this week, users can add comments to the stories they\u2019re reading on the app<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It sounds like the simplest thing in the world, I realize. But to Systrom, the move helps advance a few key objectives for a nascent network: it encourages users to register accounts using their phone numbers and to begin posting to Artifact directly, in a low-stress way.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s way less pressure-filled than making a post,\u201d Systrom told me in an interview this week. \u201cWhen you tweet, or you create an Instagram story \u2014 the trend that I\u2019ve seen, being part of these companies, is that fewer and fewer people post over time. And it\u2019s because you feel like you\u2019re performing. So what we wanted to do was figure out how to create a surface where people could interact and effectively post, but not feel like they were on display in a feed for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Systrom\u2019s hunch is that people will be more likely to come together around shared interests than to create the umpteenth network of friends and family. That means building community around topics rather than the standard social feed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think in general, you\u2019re more interested in what people are saying about the topics you\u2019re interested in than being connected with so-and-so and seeing what they\u2019re saying from the beginning,\u201d he said. \u201cComments are interesting because you can come across a really interesting Platformer<\/em>, have a thought on it, comment on it, and interact with the the author of the piece. It creates a layer of discussion across every single topic. And I think that\u2019s far more powerful to start.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll see,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s a bet.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bet that paid off for TikTok, one of Artifact\u2019s inspirations, whose often riotously funny comment sections are the stuff of legend<\/a>. (Or at least of many viral Twitter threads<\/a>.) We\u2019ll see whether comments on news articles, which have historically trended on a spectrum between \u201cboring\u201d and \u201coffensive,\u201d can shine in this new, AI-powered home.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another reason comments might help Artifact break through. Twitter is also sticky for journalists because, as one reader point out to me when last I wrote about this, it\u2019s where they can find people discussing their work. If reporters can soon find a large audience of people discussing their stories elsewhere, they\u2019ll be likelier to move.<\/p>\n

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Artifact is usually fun<\/em> to read, but it doesn\u2019t make me feel caught up on the news<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The other obvious analog here is Reddit, which also offers users a ranked feed of mostly news stories along with typically excellent ranked commentary on them. Artifact is borrowing Reddit\u2019s \u201ckarma\u201d system, giving users a reputation score that grows as people upvote their comments. The hope is that, as on Reddit, the good ones will rise to the top, while also encouraging people to be civil and entertaining.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Systrom told me, they want to build new verification features for commenters \u2014 noting when someone who says they are an epidemiologist actually is one, say, or is the original author of a news story.<\/p>\n

Product managers at the old Twitter talked about this stuff for years without ever quite shipping it: feeds sorted automatically by subject; optional verification for all. If Artifact takes off, it has a chance to implement some true next-generation thinking about social feeds that I would love to see widely copied.<\/p>\n

As Systrom is the first to admit, the company still has a lot of other stuff to build first. As a news junkie, I\u2019d say Artifact is usually fun<\/em> to read, but it doesn\u2019t make me feel caught up on the news that\u2019s important to me the way a quick glance at Techmeme does. (I would say the same about Reddit, for what it\u2019s worth.) I\u2019m open to the idea that AI will eventually be picking out stories like this better than the average human editor, but for the moment they\u2019re still playing catch-up.<\/p>\n

II.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Artifact has big ambitions, and I suspect its founders would not be satisfied if the product did not eventually have even more users than Twitter did at its peak. To get there, they aren\u2019t simply trying to clone the parts of Twitter that worked. They\u2019re building a new community of news junkies and slowly but surely teaching them how to post and to discuss the news.<\/p>\n

The more popular approach, which you see in Mastodon, Post, T2, and others, is to simply clone the parts of Twitter that worked. They might argue that they\u2019re doing something different \u2014 Post hopefully promises more \u201ccivil\u201d conversations<\/a>, for example \u2014 but in the end you\u2019re still just following users and reading the things they post there.<\/p>\n

Of all these efforts, the one that seems to have shaken Musk the most<\/a> lately is Substack, which rolled out its Notes product<\/a> this week. (See my ethics disclosure about Substack<\/a>.) Notes \u2014 which shows you a feed of text and links from writers you follow on the platform, plus others that an algorithm guesses you might find appealing \u2014 indeed looks a lot like Twitter, if you stripped out everyone that wasn\u2019t a writer.<\/p>\n

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\"Screenshots<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Screenshots of Substacks Notes feature on a phone and a desktop browser.<\/figcaption>

Image: Substack<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It turns out this has a certain appeal, particularly if you\u2019re the sort of person who subscribes to a lot of Substacks. (I subscribe to more than 50.) One thing Notes gets right is that in addition to showing you posts from writers you\u2019re already reading, it also shows you popular posts from other writers in the network. The day that Notes launched, I observed a notable uptick in paid monthly subscriptions, and I strongly suspect that people who encountered me for the first time on Notes were the driving force.<\/p>\n

At the same time, at least for the moment, Substack\u2019s limitations relative to Twitter are readily apparent. Notes offers a subset of writers you can already find on Twitter, and what they\u2019re talking about is mostly their own newsletters. (Ben Thompson made this point on Wednesday<\/a>.) Maybe the conversation will broaden out over time \u2014 my own feed currently contains live updates on a Yankees game from a writer I don\u2019t subscribe to.<\/p>\n

But comparing the opportunity here \u2014 Artifact trying to build a commentary layer on top of the entire web and Substack building a discovery layer for its writer customers \u2014 it\u2019s clear to me which is larger and which a rival social network ought to take more seriously.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, one other subject took over my Notes feed Thursday: Substack CEO Chris Best\u2019s interview Thursday on the Decoder podcast<\/a>, in which host Nilay Patel pressed him on the company\u2019s content moderation capabilities. Asked whether Substack would remove (the implication was remove from Notes<\/em>) a post that said \u201call brown people are animals and they shouldn\u2019t be allowed in America,\u201d Best refused to answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to get into gotcha content moderation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t really say it\u2019s a \u201cgotcha\u201d to ask a platform about the limits of its community standards. Particularly when a company that had previously built email and web infrastructure for independent entrepreneurs \u2014 some of whom have plainly noxious beliefs \u2014 suddenly throws them all together in a ranked social feed.<\/p>\n

A service where every reader has to manually opt in to receiving a publication, as with Substack\u2019s emails, can get away with doing less moderation. For the most part, it\u2019s merely providing the plumbing. But now Substack is going to take those same noxious writers and promote them to its wider user base, using the same opaque algorithms that drive everyone insane on every other social product.<\/p>\n

For the moment, Substack appears to be hoping that the laissez-faire ethos it brings to content moderation as an infrastructure provider can survive the jump to making full-fledged social products. If Substack did, it would be a first. We\u2019ve seen what radically scaling back content moderation<\/a> has done for Twitter. Of all the ways Substack could clone that platform, this is not the one I would choose.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m confident that something, someday, will replace Twitter. Musk just claimed his dog is CEO<\/a>, for chrissakes. But doing so is first and foremost a matter of building a superior product \u2014 and while nothing has quite hit that bar, the opportunity is real, and the builders are building.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Casey Newton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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