How a TikTok-like algorithm and pay-to-play scheme ruined Twitter's complex but functional community, causing the social network to suddenly lose its vitality
Remains of the DayEugene Wei
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece lands at the end of an arc the related coverage has been building since [[a:939378|TikTok discarded the assumption that social media runs on individual connections and friend networks]]. The Washington Post framing the same week — that Twitter's arcane follower-based system is its biggest struggle against TikTok's algorithmic feed — shows the tension: Twitter is copying the challenger's distribution model rather than fixing its own.
What makes today's argument sharper than the earlier decline-under-Musk coverage that compared Twitter to LiveJournal and Tumblr is that it names a mechanism: an imported algorithm plus a pay-to-play scheme broke a community that was complex but functional. That maps directly onto the enshittification cycle described in January, where platforms abuse users after luring in business customers.
First-order effects
Users who built reach through years of follower relationships now compete against algorithmic distribution they can't opt out of or predict, so established community dynamics stop working overnight.
The pay-to-play layer means visibility becomes purchasable, shifting the platform's incentive from serving conversation to selling placement.
Second-order effects
Communities that depended on predictable follower-based discovery lose their connective tissue, pushing active users toward networks where their existing graph still functions — the same migration pattern LiveJournal and Tumblr users followed when new ownership broke their communities.
Rivals can now position themselves as the defender of chronological, follower-driven feeds, turning 'not TikTok' into a product feature.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, the industry consolidates around a single algorithmic-feed paradigm where organic reach is a paid product everywhere — confirming that TikTok's 2019 break with friend-network assumptions wasn't an outlier but the template every incumbent eventually adopts.
The episode strengthens the enshittification framework as the standard lens for platform lifecycles: value extracted from users to serve paying customers, with community collapse as the measurable endpoint.
The trend: Social platforms are converging on TikTok's interest-graph algorithm as the universal distribution model, trading stable follower communities for engagement-optimized, increasingly paid reach.
This is pretty long, but I thought passages really captured some of the hard to describe characteristics that made the prime Twitter era great. And also why we'll probably never quite get that back. https://www.eugenewei.com/...
This is an excellent (though long) essay on Twitter as a social phenomenon - what was special about it at it's peak, and the impact of Musk's interventions. This is about sociology more than technology. Thought-provoking. A lot of the observations apply to Reddit as well, I th…
THE NETWORK WAR I really like @eugenewei's writing, and recommend you read his piece. But I'd argue it misses the core point of the last few years. Namely, that this isn't primarily a product conversation anymore. We're in the middle of the Network War, where all previously... ht…
“The internet is still so young that it's still momentous to see a social network of some scale and lifespan suddenly lose its vitality.” 🤕 - @eugenewei https://www.eugenewei.com/...
“It's as if neighbors of years moved out from my block overnight, replaced by strangers who all came knocking on my front door carrying not a casserole but a tweetstorm about how to tune my ChatGPT and MidJourney prompts.” https://www.eugenewei.com/...
Twitter's unique offering, as articulated by @eugenewei: “Most sane people don't enjoy seeing a bunch of random bursts of text from strangers one after the other, but those that do really really love it.” https://www.eugenewei.com/...
Requiem for a dream. Speaker for the dead. @eugenewei puts words to the elusive feeling many of us know. Realizing that like cities there won't be a climatic end to the Twitter we grew up in. Just a slow hollowing out until it isn't your neighborhood https://www.eugenewei.com/...
“Twitter may have been Frankensteinian in its construction, but it was our little monster”. https://www.eugenewei.com/... Brilliant essay by @eugenewei on how Twitter's For You algorithm broke its unique graph
summoning @eugenewei from retirement to update status as a service re: Threads. It seems to me that (most) arent seeking to gain incremental social capital by moving to Threads, which would arguably doom the undertaking. They just want to play the game they know and love/hate. [i…
Twitter literally changed the trajectory of my life; this last couple of paragraphs just hit so hard. Twitter created real friendships, but always ran the risk of turning into a zombie land by not building a real business. [image]
Elon has actually solved things as complex as rocket science, but trying to navigate the rules of social status and discourse on Twitter is a completely different beast - a beast that's extremely challenging to tame. [image]
This is so true. My personal and professional network can, in large part, be attributed to the relationships I've made on here. I think it's why I still hang on here in the hope that the whiny brat will be forced out before the whole thing gets shuttered. https://twitter.com/...
I've noticed that I'm seeing fewer of my FinTwit friends' tweets... so I was struck by this good (but long) essay on Elon's mistaken changes to the algo that emphasized clickbait over mutuals' tweets. As usual, Wei offers plenty of peripheral insights about community and more. ht…
I'll miss peak Twitter. It was never perfect, but it was the social media site best suited to me. I met some of my closest friends today through Twitter, and I feel the absence of so many of them who've left. Twitter won't vanish, it will persist, but it won't ever be the same.
Terrific look at what Twitter has been, its evolution, what it has offered to some (absolutely to me, ~1/2 my professional network in Spain I met or got connected to via Twitter), and what it's no longer doing so well. By @eugenewei https://www.eugenewei.com/... [image]
“If Twitter's journey epitomizes the sentimental truism that the real treasure was the friends we made along the way, then the story of its demise will begin the moment we could no longer find those friends on that darkened timeline.” https://www.eugenewei.com/...
New @eugenewei on Twitter's evolution/devolution under Musk. Well worth reading. Most important insight IMO is this bit on passive negative sentiment. I've discovered “Not Interested” actually makes For You great, but most will never click it enough. https://www.eugenewei.com/...…
“All my followers are accumulated social capital that seem to have been rendered near worthless by algorithmic deflation.” from @eugenewei's post How to blow up a timeline: https://www.eugenewei.com/...
My first piece in a while, How to Blow Up a Timeline, is on how Twitter lost its vitality as a social network. (I wrote this before the rate-limiting fiasco and accelerated launch of Threads, so I'll have to leave that discussion for another day) https://www.eugenewei.com/...
Threads is very aggressive with distribution from the jump. Seems smart when trying to get people to stick with it though there are always downstream consequences
“Twitter may have been Frankensteinian in its construction, but it was our little monster”. https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2023/7/ 6/how-to-blow-up-a-timeline Lovely essay by @eugenewei on how...
I haven't had time to write about Threads, but I wanted analyze and mourn the decline of my most-used social media service ever, Twitter. It was often a hot mess, but it felt like our hot mess, and...