Watching X
Casey Newton plans to return to X in the coming days. He wrote in Platformer this week:
The community of people working in and around artificial intelligence product and policy simply refuses to move away from X, no matter how bad it gets.
And:
I am among those who believe that the next year will be decisive in shaping the future of AI policy, regulation, and safety. And increasingly, attempting to influence the AI policy conversation without participating on X (or Substack) has made me feel like I am fighting with both hands tied behind my back.
Three months ago, I blogged about reevaluating support for X in Micro.blog. I got mixed feedback about it, but ultimately decided that the negative feedback was enough for me to shelve the rollout. It was not worth the controversy.
Since that blog post, Federico Viticci and John Voorhees returned to X. Other people started posting to X who had never even posted to Twitter before, like Jensen Huang and Jeffrey Katzenberg. While I still believe X is doomed in the long run — closed, rudderless, and toxic to many — the AI community has held on to a remnant of the old Twitter, and in fact that community is growing, apparently immune to the decay of a platform that has no soul.
I should’ve followed my gut back in July. If I had brought back X cross-posting, I could now reach out to Federico or Casey and pitch them on posting simultaneously to their microblogs and X. Instead, I’ll watch from the sidelines as the most pivotal discussions about AI remain heavily centered around X instead of the open web.