It's even worse than it appears.
Sunday October 4, 2020; 9:59 AM EDT
  • I started writing in Twitter just now and it turned into a short list of where Twitter is at from my point of view. Likes and dislikes.#
    • One thing I dislike in Twitter is seeing links to interesting stories that I can't read because they're behind a paywall.#
      • This is happening more, it seems. I expect it is because the pubs are getting better at building circulation that way.#
      • It seems Twitter could do something to help here. Either work out a deal with publishers that would allow Twitter users to read articles on a per-story basis. Act as a distribution platform. #
        • Or give users the ability to say "I don't want to see links to these pubs, because I don't subscribe to them." If we can't have the former, I want the latter. I'm tired of seeing links to stories I can't read. And subscribing to all the pubs with paywalls is ridiculous, of course. #
    • I also dislike that Twitter is so hierarchic. #
      • People decide whether something is important based on who the writer is. There doesn't seem to be much room for ideas to circulate on their own merit. #
      • There is a circle of commentators and you're either in or out. I'm out and you are probably too. (And I have a blue checkmark and tens of thousands of followers.) #
      • You can say all you want, but if it's outside your perceived area of expertise, no one will hear it. #
        • I'm an expert in using and building the kind of networks we use today. #
        • But everyone thinks they're an expert in this, so that expertise counts for little. #
      • Having money automatically conveys value to your ideas. #
        • It's the most transportable form of expertise, because (I guess) people think you can buy whatever expertise you personally don't have?#
    • I like writing in Twitter, and that makes me think a tool something like this for offline writing might be good.#
      • It's a lot like an outliner. Chunks of text. Twitter has fuzzy ways of navigating the structure. Hard to feel it. Outliners are pretty clear about the structure. And the structure is editable in an outliner. #
      • I've often wondered if an outliner wouldn't make a good writing tool for Twitter. I don't do it that way, so obviously at that level it's not there. #
    • I dislike how hard it is to find something I wrote on Twitter. I pretty much have to get an idea into my blog so it can be indexed by the search engines. That's the only way I have any hope of finding it in the future. #

© 1994-2020 Dave Winer.

Last update: Sunday October 4, 2020; 9:44 PM EDT.

You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)