So, after leaving X for Mastodon, and trying out the likes of Bluesky and Threads, I’m back on X. I don’t post often, and tend to mostly like and retweet here and there. But I’m back in the App, and while I don’t feel great about it, I’m finding that I’m not alone. And so, once again, I’m taking the lazy way out by pointing to words written by others to highlight why:
I see more interesting posts on X than I do on Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon combined. I wish that weren’t so but it is. Most people don’t want to think about politics so they don’t. Those people, when they want to participate in a Twitter-like social network, go to X.
Those are the words of John Gruber from Daring Fireball. And ultimately I find the exact same thing. I just stopped engaging on Mastodon after a while. I was using Threads a fair amount but found the engagement bait there to be extremely annoying. But it really became an issue as I wanted to talk more about interesting use cases with AI.
You can have a discussion about cool new use cases and tools for AI on X and people just discuss the tools and use cases. On Bluesky and Mastodon it’s difficult to have such discussions without arguments from people who (a) believe all use of AI is unethical, and (b) will shove their viewpoints into your replies.
Now, I will say, X is not without it’s problems. I feel like I’m only one bad scroll away from something overly sexual, and there is a lot of AI-generated misinformation. And yet, I find way more interesting content there than anywhere else. I’m not happy about it, but at the end of the day I choose to use the product that works best for me.
I’m not completely abandoning alternative platforms, and I will continue to give them a shot, but X seems to offer content presented in a way the others don’t, and it works for me.
At least for now.