Hi Brett, nice post. Yes, Twitter shadowbans accounts that link to Substack - I've experienced this myself. For a year or two I posted links to it that got no engagement in a masochistic grind, but I recently decided screw it and deleted all my posts there (my account remains open).
The issues with Twitter are numerous: (1) the shadowban issue, (2) it rewires dopamine receptors to prefer short-form, shallow content at the expense of longer and detailed, more academic content, like watching quick cut television makes it harder to read a book, (3) it is algorithmically manipulative, pushing you to view content the establishment prefers (even if it wants you within a sub-set echo chamber) -- not to mention (4) the site remains under the control of the CIA, FBI, and ADL, as the "Twitter Files" was a quietly scrubbed limited hangout. Perhaps these things are worth accepting for a bit more reach -- I still wrestle with the dilemma -- but the site, and Musk himself, deeply suck.
Agree with all of that. But on the old Twitter I was able to curate my feed to where I saw almost nothing but long-form, relevant content. As best I can tell, X makes this much more difficult or impossible. The old twitter was a great place to grow a newsletter. X makes this impossible too.
Hi Brett, nice post. Yes, Twitter shadowbans accounts that link to Substack - I've experienced this myself. For a year or two I posted links to it that got no engagement in a masochistic grind, but I recently decided screw it and deleted all my posts there (my account remains open).
The issues with Twitter are numerous: (1) the shadowban issue, (2) it rewires dopamine receptors to prefer short-form, shallow content at the expense of longer and detailed, more academic content, like watching quick cut television makes it harder to read a book, (3) it is algorithmically manipulative, pushing you to view content the establishment prefers (even if it wants you within a sub-set echo chamber) -- not to mention (4) the site remains under the control of the CIA, FBI, and ADL, as the "Twitter Files" was a quietly scrubbed limited hangout. Perhaps these things are worth accepting for a bit more reach -- I still wrestle with the dilemma -- but the site, and Musk himself, deeply suck.
Agree with all of that. But on the old Twitter I was able to curate my feed to where I saw almost nothing but long-form, relevant content. As best I can tell, X makes this much more difficult or impossible. The old twitter was a great place to grow a newsletter. X makes this impossible too.
Just a little sad that we lost a valuable tool.
I did wonder why I was seeing so little of you, to the extent I though you must have stopped using X.
Worry not... it'll happen here too 😔