To the extent that it ever was useful, Twitter is about to become the opposite of that.
One of the reasons I don’t hitch my digital wagon to online services such as Twitter and Facebook is that their whole businesses rely on manipulating you and infringing on your privacy. As many have pointed out, you are the product.
I run my own domains (though hosted), where I could migrate all my data very easily elsewhere at any time.
Twitter’s changes will as Nina points out make it utterly useless for news or digital activism. Which, of course, is the point because as Twitter sees it, the less controversial a platform can make itself the more money it can bring in. And just as important the more it can force you to look at what it wants you to see, the more cash for them.
I never used Twitter for just these reasons. Same reasons I never used Facebook, Tumblr, LiveJournal, and any of those other platforms. I don’t like being the product and avoid it if at all possible.
(This is not an implied criticism of those who do use those services. I understand the reasons. They just aren’t good enough for me.)
Twitter certainly seems to be losing its innocence, as all business models do.
You appear to be what I call a “server side netizen,” and I applaud that. It’s the punk/DIY approach. I think it’s also why the war on general purpose computing has expanded into a war on blogging (understand of course that “microblogging” is not in any sense blogging) and a phase-out of RSS support by the info-conglomerates.
Yes, it’s all developing according to the interests of the corporations who quickly gained control of the internet. And for convenience, it appears most people are happy enough to let them have it.
I guess one day I will be an old fogey yammering on about “how it used to be” as the 20-year-olds get anything that offends the corporate panjandrums deleted from their timelines algorithmically. Except since for them it will always have been that way, they will think nothing of it.
Actually I miss BBSes. A lot of the “new” ideas on the internet are poor re-implementations of technologies developed on BBSes in the 1980s. Funny that most of the people who believe they are innovating really aren’t.