Twitter punished me for literally doing my job.
Imagine the future of journalism once Section 230 is repealed or reformed.
(No, I won't be using this platform as I have been. I've been "admonished" on the word of a religious lobby.)
Opaque to even get a contact person.
What they want is for me to "check myself" before reporting. They got it.
This is WITH SECTION 230 IN PLACE.
Now imagine post-repeal.
I hate to agree with Trump on anything, but his rants about Twitter's deliberate opacity and arbitrary doling out of punishment are not incorrect.
More from Twitter
I'm going to make a bomb shell statement here around the turn of the year, something so risky that I face prospects of the Twitter account being attacked or even banned.
— Cosmic Penguin (@Cosmic_Penguin) December 31, 2020
It's about my very uneasy Twitter experience over the past 2-6 months, the worst I could ever remember.
You see, I realized in the last few months that, by translating information and news related to one of the fastest growing spaceflight powers of the world...I inadvertently became a spreader of PRC propaganda.
And with me exactly 180 degrees away from them, I feel scared.
It actually started a few years ago - it's not hard to meet Chinese Twitter users interested in spaceflight, either those living overseas or find a way to climb over the wall. Not surprisingly, many of these S/F enthusiasts are interested in their own military too.
This steadily grew with my followers' count until the flagship Chinese spaceflight missions of 2020 (Chang'e 5 especially but also many others) brought in dozens of them liking/re-tweeting my info tweets sometimes, and similar no. of such followers every month.
I do casually check these new followers/users sometimes. To my horror, far too many of them routinely insults, attacks, mocks others who they see as "anti-China" or spread potential mis-information, even blatant attacks, that started off w/ their state media/spokesperson.
I bookmark everything that looks interesting and go there when in need of inspiration.
This is a thread-recap of the best-saved tweets from 2020 (for me at least) and what you can steal from each one. 🧵👇
The year chart by @jakobgreenfeld
What to steal: the idea and the design
Create a chart with the key moments of your growth. It's a great reflective exercise for you and it can be a great learning experience for your
Here's roughly how I grew from 0 to 1400 followers in 4 months. pic.twitter.com/NqY54cWXpC
— Jakob Greenfeld (@jakobgreenfeld) December 15, 2020
Let's collaborate by @aaraalto
What to steal: the idea.
Creating a blank piece of content (could be a sentence, a design, a video...) that your audience can later
Let's collaborate
— Aaron Aalto (@aaraalto) December 17, 2020
Step 1: Take this image
Step 2: Be creative with it
Step 3: Reply with your creation pic.twitter.com/xCcCShLvdI
Advice to first-time info product creators by @dvassallo
What to steal: the insight
This tweet was one of the sparks for me writing the Twitter Thief ($1,3k revenue says it's good
My advice to first-time info product creators:
— Daniel Vassallo (@dvassallo) July 26, 2020
1. Start with a very small product.
2. Choose a topic you know well that will almost write itself. Avoid doing research.
3. Timebox production to 2 weeks.
4. Charge $10.
5. Promote it!
All the lessons are in #5. Best of luck!
How to be a better writer by @JamesClear
What to steal: the insight
A world-class writer giving free writing lessons. The tweet is from 2019 but I discovered it this
How to be a better writer:
— James Clear (@JamesClear) July 5, 2019
-write about what fascinates you
-make one point per sentence
-use stories to make your point
-cut extra words like \u201creally\u201d and \u201cvery\u201d
-read the whole thing out loud
-post publicly (you\u2019ll try harder when you know others will read it)
What else?