"They need us. We don't need them:" The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate
www.salon.com
The business model depends on "triggering" liberals — but they're running out of progressives to bait

"They need us. We don’t need them”

  • o_oli@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    2 years ago

    Interesting take. I wonder how it will pan out.

    All this, Ryan said, explains why the trolls “are getting more extreme and desperate.” The pool of people available to get attention from is shrinking, so the only way to keep the engagement rates as high is to say wilder and nastier things

    If that happens then it will just implode quite rapidly. Regular users will just leave and that fuels the fire and Twitter just becomes yet another niche right wing echo chamber in no time.

    I do question the claim that ‘the trolls are getting more extreme’ though. That seems like anecdotal evidence and I wonder if it’s actually happening. The author listed many examples of extreme views on Twitter but I could have done the same thing and made the same claim 5 years ago. There has always been loonies on there and some of them get worse and some don’t.