Emrys
Emrys's JournalFor context, Twitter has something like 73 million active users in the US.
There are around 19 million in the UK alone.
Here are the worldwide figures:
The figures below are based on Twitter’s advertising audience data for July 2022.
Note: our regions follow the United Nations Geoscheme. Click here to learn which countries belong to each region.
Number of active Twitter users in Northern America: 92.1 million
Number of active Twitter users in Central America: 19.1 million
Number of active Twitter users in the Caribbean: 3.3 million
Number of active Twitter users in Southern America: 43.1 million
Number of active Twitter users in Western Europe: 30.6 million
Number of active Twitter users in Northern Europe: 27.2 million
Number of active Twitter users in Southern Europe: 20.4 million
Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Europe: 8.2 million
Number of active Twitter users in Northern Africa: 8.0 million
Number of active Twitter users in Western Africa: 6.3 million
Number of active Twitter users in Middle Africa: 551 thousand
Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Africa: 4.0 million
Number of active Twitter users in Southern Africa: 3.4 million
Number of active Twitter users in Western Asia: 44.7 million
Number of active Twitter users in Central Asia: 377 thousand
Number of active Twitter users in Southern Asia: 30.9 million
Number of active Twitter users in Southeastern Asia: 57.6 million
Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Asia: 81.6 million
Number of active Twitter users in Oceania: 4.9 million
https://datareportal.com/essential-twitter-stats
I joined Twitter a few years ago while Trump was very much in residence.
I saw more of and about Trump and his tweets on DU that I ever did on Twitter because I chose not to seek him out and to spend my time on Twitter more productively.
This very evening, without his even having re-taken up residence on Twitter, I've read more about Trump on DU than I have on Twitter.
While Twitter provides me with the company, wisdom, energy and humour of like-minded people, and some just different enough to be stimulating, I'll be stuffed if anyone is going to drive me off it, not Musk, and certainly not a hasbeen would-be despot who will hopefully soon be a disgraced jailbird.
Why the hell would I give Musk or Trump such power over me?
Yeah yeah, Marge *pat head*, that's going to go really well ... [Twitter]
Loose-lipped self-appointed GOP mouthpiece Marge Traytor Greene just can't hold herself back from spilling the beans about the grand plans the new GOP House caucus has in store in the next session.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1593788290205089792
@RonFilipkowski
Marge says she has a plan to stop the Special Counsel: “They can tell Jack Smith he’s not going to get much of a paycheck. It’s gonna be real simple. We’re not going to do this. That’s it. We’re gonna stop them and we’re gonna do it through the power of the purse.”
[Twitter video]
The replies are - unusually for Twitter - 100% Marge-hostile with a tinge of amusement, ranging from pointing out that Garland says the whole caboodle is already fully funded to the fact that the Senate has a say in such matters to many who are offering to crowdfund Smith's endeavours to those pointing out that Marge herself may find she has some questions to answer in a formal setting and allegedly already asked TFG for a pardon and was turned down.
Oh, and there's a few memes. In the absence of cowbell, more memes is always good.
Twitter's crucial role in real-life emergency response
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1593272807533821954@RVAwonk
I spoke to @TIME about how Twitter became such a vital part of our emergency comms infrastructure — serving as a hub for witness reports, real-time updates, news-gathering, & more — and why losing such a lifeline would be so disastrous and likely deadly.
Time.com
Twitter's Power in a Crisis Won't Be Easy to Replace
If Twitter as we know it is lost, experts say a critical tool for responding to a crisis will be lost
https://time.com/6233609/uva-shooting-twitter-crisis/
(Unfortunately, the TIME article isn't accessible without signing up - no cost, just email registration.)
@RVAwonk
Furthermore, we’re currently dealing with multiple crises at once, thanks to the impulsive and poorly-rolled-out verification system update, which resulted in a bunch of imposter accounts with blue checkmarks. During a crisis, this could be absolutely catastrophic.
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1593277101783875592
Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D
@RVAwonk
People have used Twitter to report the 1st witness accounts of major world events, and a significant number of people use Twitter to communicate w/ emergency services when 911 call centers are overwhelmed. It’s not right that people could be cut off from that lifeline on a whim.
The bright side for Musk [Tweet]
Made me laugh anyway.
https://twitter.com/Xytiel/status/1593393834590969856
Zoë Schiffer
@ZoeSchiffer
NEW: Twitter just alerted employees that effective immediately, all office buildings are temporarily closed and badge access is suspended. No details given as to why.
Elissa
@Xytiel
On the other hand his lawyers in the case about his Tesla comp can now argue that Tesla paying him $50 billion while he spends all his time supposedly running Twitter is in fact a very good deal for Tesla.
Sometimes, Putin's state-sanctioned war cheerleaders don't do him any favours
Or do they?
Маргарита Симоньян
@M_Simonyan
Вот и у Польши появилась своя Белгородская область. А как вы хотели?
Translated from Russian by Google
So Poland got its own Belgorod region. And how did you want?
For those who don't know, Margarita Simonyan is editor-in-chief of RT (Russia Toady, sorry, Today) and state-controlled media group Rossiya Segodnya.
She can regularly be seen ranting on Russian TV, in ways that might one day earn her a slot on Fox News if Tucker Carlson ever tires of his schtick, courtesy of Julia Lewis's vigilance on Lewis's twitter feed: https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews (and if anyone can take a look at Davis's Twitter feed and not come to the conclusion that Russia is the ultimate baddie in this clusterfuck, they're beyond reaching or bothering with).
Meanwhile:
https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1592599422147661824
@TpyxaNews
Russian market collapsed on the news of two missiles landing on the territory of Poland, a NATO member.
and even more meanwhile:
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1592610376507883520
@JuliaDavisNews
Russia's official response about today's events in Poland:
The accusations of "raging antisemitism" gained more currency in the US than in the UK,
which is why it's an absolute waste of time trying to talk about them and the Labour Party during the Corbyn era on a US-dominated forum starting from the sort of groundbase of belief typified by your reply.
But to waste just a little of my time, right-wing factions within Labour weaponized a number of issues to muddy the name of Corbyn and the vast influx of supporters his time as leader brought the party, and literally worked to sabotage Labour's prospects in the run-up to the last election, and our media and yours lapped it up wholesale.
Some time spent on Google yourself would probably be more useful if you really want to understand the situation and its development, as the severely sceptical are unlikely to believe any I supply, but here's just a few:
London School of Economics study "Journalistic Representations of Jeremy Corbyn in the British Press": https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/research/research-projects/representations-of-jeremy-corbyn
Media Reform Coalition report "Labour, Antisemitism and the News: A Disinformation Paradigm": https://www.mediareform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Labour-anti-semitism-and-the-news-EXEC-SUM-FINAL-PROOFED.pdf
Scottish Daily Record: "Secret Scottish-based office led infowars attack on Labour and Jeremy Corbyn: Explosive leaked documents passed to the Sunday Mail reveal the organisation’s Integrity Initiative is funded with £2million of Foreign Office cash and run by military intelligence specialists": https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/foreign-office-funds-2m-infowars-13707574
Monthly Review report "Anatomy of a Propaganda Campaign: Jeremy Corbyn’s Political Assassination" (includes a section on the antisemitism accusations and the fact that Labour's record on that issue was no worse, and probably slightly better, than the Tories' and that of the general population, as has been borne out by a number of reputable academic studies): https://monthlyreview.org/2022/02/01/anatomy-of-a-propaganda-campaign-jeremy-corbyns-political-assassination/
For some sort of balance and a more or less Establishment overview, a BBC article: "A guide to Labour Party anti-Semitism claims": https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45030552
I'm not a Labour supporter, BTW, haven't been for decades, and have a history of being critical of Corbyn on this board for my own reasons.
Whatever, what we're left with is a Labour Party under Starmer that's very vocally hell-bent on following the Tory Party down some very dark sociocultural holes (like its stance on immigration) and avoiding addressing some of the main issues that have made the UK such a disaster zone (particularly Brexit).
I would know next to nothing about the Ukraine conflict without Twitter.
What I did know would likely be days old, filtered editorially, of questionable accuracy, and in too great quantity to sift through within a news cycle. Some of the Ukrainian accounts I read regularly are actual people on the ground there (as verified from a number of sources for the best part of a year). Some of them include journalists who can go into greater granular detail than they can in whatever mainstream outlets they have and can update in real time if they want to. Their tweets also give a sense of who they are and what their experiences are like that no ossified, static medium could.
I would have a very warped view of my home country Scotland's politics without Twitter. 99%+ of its media are owned by entities outside Scotland, and all have agendas that mean I have to hold my nose in any search for anything resembling plain facts about the country, its governance and the quest among a significant proportion of its population for independence. It would be easy to feel powerless and isolated in those circumstances. I don't, because I can read selected accounts' output that impresses on me daily that I'm most definitely not alone and shares information I would have great trouble finding elsewhere, or at all.
That's just two examples out of many fields in my own experience.
Thing is, when I first ventured onto Twitter, it was weird and overwhelming. I didn't even have an account at first, so I didn't have access to a timeline or Twitter pals or any of the tools that Twitter uses to bring new users into the fold.
You're stalled at that stage. There's no reason for you to go further if you don't want to. Its no skin off my nose or anybody else's who does use Twitter and finds worth in it on a daily basis. But kindly quit looking down your nose at those of us who do, because it's unnecessarily obnoxious.
This endless succession of threads, usually from people who have little experience of Twitter and no interest at all in learning more because they dismiss it out of hand, seemingly berating those of us who do for our choice among the vast information stream we all have access to nowadays, gets really tired.
Use the media and the internet and these forums however you want to. And let those of us who do find useful information on Twitter on a regular basis and drag it back here to share carry on doing so without the constant timewasting griping.
If it's a post of mine, there'll usually be fair warning that it involves Twitter. Unless DU decides to ban Twitter content from DU, it's not going away.
Probably tl;dr, but you asked a question. There's an answer.
Twitter Blue just launched, and it's ... going really well so far [Contains Twitter]
Twitter Blue is trending in the UK, at least. My curiosity got the better of me and I'm a great fan of recursiveness and all things meta, so I checked the top few tweets. Here's a wee sample from the first 20 or so.https://twitter.com/guicane/status/1589001927538659329
Daniel Sinclair
@_DanielSinclair
Ok so they launched the new Twitter Blue features, but they forgot to change the IAP price from $4.99, and the Verified feature doesn’t actually work. The New banner takes you no where.
Gui
@guicane
It says it’s available in the UK but there’s no sign of it in the updated app
https://twitter.com/emilycrockett/status/1588890347245309952
@emilycrockett
I can't wait until Twitter Blue drops and THE PEOPLE have a say!
Specifically the people who are trolls.
Who will now get to credibly impersonate a celebrity for the LOW LOW PRICE of $8/month!!!
This guy's bio says he's a Tesla investor:
https://twitter.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1588960868917968896
@SawyerMerritt
BREAKING: Twitter has officially launched the revamped Twitter Blue for $7.99/month in select countries.
Not all features are live yet. Some are coming later. Looks like the blue verified checkmark is now part of Twitter Blue, but as a Blue user I’m not seeing a checkmark yet.
https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1588981510916276224
@GergelyOrosz
On one end, impressive that this new, verified feature got built and shipped in a week, people working 84 hour weeks.
On the other: it doesn’t work.
I’m a Twitter Blue subscriber. The new app tells me I now have a verified checkmark. But I don’t.
Fast work, but sloppy work.
https://twitter.com/reckless/status/1589039688316510209
@reckless
Reminder to everyone doing Twitter Blue subscriber and revenue math that Apple takes 30 percent of every subscription for the first year whee
https://twitter.com/Sabuuchi/status/1588970559391440897
@Sabuuchi
It would really suck if people bought Twitter Blue with the sole intention of uploading entire episodes of TV shows to get the host in trouble for negligently enabling copyright infringement.
Surely a lack of proper content ID systems and stripped moderation team wont hurt this.
To be fair, one guy is delighted because he posts animation videos, and with his new blue tick and all, he's now posted a 10-minute video, but nobody got time for that. Well, OK, surprisingly, 999 repliers seemed to have, but he's using the surge in interest to spam the first few reply slots with links to assorted tat and paraphernalia and invite folks to "follow our YT channel we post videos there almost daily". So he's paid Musk his yearly sub to post a longer video than he'd normally share on Twitter, and one person in the replies I looked at before I totally lost interest has invoked @Downloaderbot. Somebody hasn't quite thought through the economics of all this, maybe it's me.
Happy days. I'm just going to back away from all this now and let it simmer. More at the link in the first sentence up top if anyone's interested.
OOPS. ETA I forgot to include this one:
https://twitter.com/Win98Tech/status/1588993204619288576
@Win98Tech
Twitter Blue is apparently rolling out so just getting this ready to go
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Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Scotland
Member since: Mon Sep 7, 2009, 12:57 AM
Number of posts: 7,280