The anti-Twitter diatribes continue using the same old techniques. Let’s see, we have a podcast series with Jay Rosen to prop up Dave’s media and journalism discussions.

Then there’s the who follows who pages to try to uncover the secret elite inner circle or something like that. As an aside, I’m “on Twitter” and I have subscribed to a set of people. But I never actually open up Twitter apps or the Twitter web site. So the tweeting may be happening, but I’m not listening.

Now we have the railing against Twitter as Fragile So It Cannot Be Trusted Because It is Going To Go Away. Let’s see, is it as Fragile as weblogs.com? Is it as Simple as that OPML Editor Flickr Fans application (two points: a whacked out application to edit text and a whacked out application that normally edits text being used to download images from Flickr). Many straw men propped up in this one: we have people who lost their money in Katrina because the ATMs ran out of money? Who lost money then? We have the Twitter won’t tell me how it works so it must not be simple and therefore cannot be trusted.

So which is it? Is Twitter a vital global utility too important to fail? Or is it a passing toy of the celebrities.

The Jealousy is Delicious. The Envy is Sublime.

No, because no one is quite as narcissistic as dave winer. It absolutely kills him not to be on the sul. It kills him that no one listens to him. And it kills him that no one uses anything he develops.

1. That being on the Suggested User List has a real and significant value (for a while, this was based on Jason Calacanis’ offer to pay $240K a year, but Jason has now admitted that was a joke.).
2. That media organizations on the SUL are aware of the value of this “gift.”
3. That the editorial sides of media organizations are then coerced to write favorable coverage because of the worth of this gift.

All of which makes for an admittedly weak argument that a conflict of interest occured, but that hasn’t stopped Dave from making this case. This attack on Mashable illustrates the typical style, a chain of hypothetical smears that essentially boil down to a loaded question like “Are you still beating your wife?” For a while, he limited his accusations to technical bloggers (a common foil for him), but I lost my patience when he accused the New York Times of being in the bag for twitter (full disclosure: I work on twitter for the NYT) because the Personal Tech column ran a how-to on twitter tools:

BTW, I love the way the NY Times, a member of the S.U.L. ran a tutorial for Twitter newbies. A little quid pro quo?? Perhaps? — Dave Winer

I mean, WHY ELSE would a column about personal technology cover twitter except for media collusion? A conflict of interest is a serious charge, but one that does not seem to be made here on any particular merit.

@davewiner I have no resentment & I’m good friends w/Twitter folks.My 16k email subs & 10k This Week in Startups viewers r more important

http://twitter.com/JasonCalacanis/status/1939321799

And another jab:

@davewiner Actually, I was never higher than #2 on Twitter. It was always a joke for me–including offering $250k for the “suggested list”

http://twitter.com/JasonCalacanis/status/1939303783

http://twitter.com/davewiner/status/1947496731