Coming to prominence around 2009, Twitter.com is the most famous “micro-blogging” site. With drastic character count limitations that force posts to be concise or to overflow into a waterfalling series of so-called tweets, Twitter pushed for the dubious adoption of URL-shorteners that provide a short proxy URL that does not indicate a given link’s destination but serves to keep character count below the limit. Tweets are notorious for being emotional, dramatic, and sometimes hostile, but are usually used to share a single thought with a link or image.
While its mention these days is primarily related to its famous and hilarious use by President Trump, Twitter is increasingly seen to have its best days behind it. Though it previously called itself a “Free Speech Platform”, Twitter took a 180-degree turn when it began politically managing its “blue checkmark” public verification status and both shadow-banning and openly banning accounts and tweets featuring conservative, right-of-center, and non-PC speech. Twitter has even taken to announcing that it will follow users’ behavior off-platform and offline penalizing users for actions or speech of which it does not approve. Twitter has devolved from ostensible free speech haven to left-of-center “safe space” – while President Trump continues to “trigger” the users that remain on the platform with his barbed quips…
The first open banning was that of the very popular and insightful Milo Yiannopoulous, who was hated by all the wrong people on Twitter and college campuses the world over before corrupt mass-media collusion forced him to reset his career during the leadup to the release of his best-selling book, Dangerous. Calls to boycott Twitter and insinuations that Twitter would soon be a dead platform followed around this time. The Alt-Tech alternative platform Gab gained notoriety around this time, but as of this writing Gab’s Twitter-like social platform has not gained wide adoption. Its news and discussion tangents – Gab Trends and Dissenter respectively, however, show great promise, and may reinvigorate Gab Social… It just needs to broaden its user base to escape the smears of colluding corporate mass media that correctly identify it as a threat to their hold on communications… Gab could become what Twitter was in the early years, but better. Until then, Twitter is the better bet of the two for connecting with most audiences, but look to adopt Gab as it gains more popularity among the people without blue checkmarks.
As for Twitter’s future, there have been rumors of its impending decline due to ethics abuses and money issues, and is no longer as popular for use by businesses as it was two or three years ago. The company recently did a massive purge of inactive accounts, which may have an impact on their server space and bottom line. Twitter may still serve as a way to interact with target audiences and customers online, depending on your industry, and it is good to have a presence. However, if they ban you it could probably be considered a badge of pride!
Alt-Tech Alternative: Gab.com