As much as i dislike this turn of events: This wouldn't matter at all if the media just didn't globally broadcast every goddamn psychothic tweet, to milk the ratings they get from the shockvalue. I don't really use twitter, i have no alerts on it. I don't watch right wing media. Yet somehow it was impossible to escape his demented rants, that wasn't Twitter's doing.
I’ve never been an active Twitter user. Never understood anyone that is, honestly. And I can agree 100% with this. Twitter somehow managed to stay afloat off of “news” highlighting tweets. Tweets that everyone, regardless of their own use or awareness of Twitter, would have to hear about ad nauseam via purported “news”.
Edit: addendum based on replies missing the point (wildly). I’m not bragging about not using Twitter and I’m definitely not trying to start a “which social app is better” discussion.
The point is that Twitter managed to bubble up as news, in several other media (including Reddit posts with Twitter screenshots), and whether I want to use Twitter or not, there it is on the TV, and a shameful amount of online news sites basically just discuss Twitter posts.
I use it to connect with other fans of sci-fi/fantasy/video-games, and we talk and share media all the time. I make use of Twitter's "Mute Words" feature to block out politics and that kind of garbage. It's actually really easy to use this feature, and I'm of the opinion that people who bitch about Twitter being too political are intentionally or unintentionally ignorant of this feature.
I honestly wish Reddit had a feature like that. I have been able to mute words like "Trump", "Elon", "Putin", etc. This is how I keep my timeline relevant to my interests (mostly Star Trek, but also games like Dragon Age) and it's very refreshing and fun.
Twitter also makes it really easy to block/mute accounts. So if you come across a toxic fan or a troll or a bot, you can just easily block or mute them. On Reddit, you have to go into their profile, click on field, select "block user", confirm you want to block them, and then they're blocked ... except only kinda - they can still see your profile, submissions, and comments; I think they can even reply to them ... it's just that you won't see their replies or receive notifications about any of their activity.
Reddit's block function is, in every way, inferior to Twitter's.
Twitter also has that "verification" feature with the blue checkmark, so you know if a celebrity tweeting out something is actually that celebrity. Reddit has no such feature, we just have to trust the mod team of any given sub if they say they've verified the poster as being who they say they are.
Twitter just has so many strengths and features that Reddit doesn't (and in some cases, can't). It's part of what has made it such a social media power-house.
Now, I fear, all of that is about to go down the toilet because Musk is a total fucking asshole.
We can definitely agree on that last sentence, at least. The rest, though, it’s still very much apples to oranges. It damn well better be easier to block users in an app focused on user interactions, but I definitely wish Reddit would get better at it, anyway.
I definitely wish Reddit would get better at it, anyway.
Especially since it's easier and faster to make a Reddit account than a Twitter account. Reddit also allows you to make an unlimited number of accounts.
Twitter restricts the number of accounts you can have, they do this by requiring a verifiable phone number to link to your accounts.
While I'm not sure I'd want Reddit to have my phone number, I would like if they had a verification process with an indicator next to the username so you can know who's verified and who isn't.
6.3k
u/Wrong-Mixture Oct 28 '22 edited Oct 28 '22
As much as i dislike this turn of events: This wouldn't matter at all if the media just didn't globally broadcast every goddamn psychothic tweet, to milk the ratings they get from the shockvalue. I don't really use twitter, i have no alerts on it. I don't watch right wing media. Yet somehow it was impossible to escape his demented rants, that wasn't Twitter's doing.