points by swed420 16 hours ago

> users that will likely never sign up to X, but who want to read/watch some content

They probably don't want their echo chamber leaking to the wider internet, because external discussion of the content would reveal it for the siloed thought bubble that it is.

Consider X now requires personal information to sign up, and after handing that info over, signups are often still rejected with no explanation given. Yet another tell they're very interested in maintaining that echo chamber.

olalonde 2 hours ago

FWIW, X is far less of an echo chamber than Bluesky, Truth Social or Reddit.

They're simply doing this to boost engagement and break scrapers.

  • otherme123 2 minutes ago

    I quit Twitter because a lot of the people I followed also quit so the site lost relevance/interest, but mainly because those who stay were turning slowly but steadily into something the network was clearly pushing. The force pushing of Elon twits into my timeline was too obvious, and once noticed that I noticed other less obvious pushes and even more insidious, silencing people I was interested in reading but suddenly their twits no longer pop in my timeline. I needed to go to their profile to read their twits.

    In short, Twitter was actively pushing me into an echo chamber, even when my follows were diverse. Bluesky, Truth Social or Reddit are users that usually want to be in that echo chamber. At least bans are very notorious there, and not shadowbans/algorithm silencing while Elon says "I am a free speech absolutist".

asveikau 12 hours ago

> signups are often still rejected with no explanation given

That's pretty odd. When I google this, there are claims that this is to prevent spam accounts. Obviously, if you choose not to take them at their word, one can read all sorts of odd reasons into it.

  • swed420 10 hours ago

    That exchange might be believable if bots didn't exist on X, but they absolutely do, hence the search for other explanations.

    Considering who owns it, it'd be weird if they didn't want a carefully curated echo chamber of sanitized thought.

    • asveikau 9 hours ago

      To be clear I agree that another reason is pretty likely. I'm just phrasing it neutrally since I don't know.. Above all I'm saying it's weird. I'm used to thinking of twitter and all the others in the same category as wanting to drive user metrics up at the expense of a lot of other priorities. Preventing new accounts seems to run counter to expectations.

abletonlive 11 hours ago

HN and Reddit are much more of an echo chamber than X is.

nailer 9 hours ago

'Echo chamber' is an odd thing to say. X has many center left and hard left accounts, they're not banned in the same "women can't be men" was during Woke 1.0.