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Ask HN: What Has Happened to Twitter?

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Re: Ask HN: What Has Happened to Twitter?

#121

Post by hitpointdrew »

stevenicr wrote: post #115

"courts already decided in the US that the public has a right to access official government communications on social media." - I'd like to know more about this. I have been bothered often when finding that city council members (and others) use facebook to put info out there, and I refuse to use fbook on most days of the year, and who knows what fbook is doing with the feed/timeline or whatever they call it so I may m…

"courts already decided in the US that the public has a right to access official government communications on social media." - I'd like to know more about this.

Someone should tell YouTube this. They have removed videos of Rand Paul speaking on the senate floor.

Re: Ask HN: What Has Happened to Twitter?

#122

Post by ascagnel_ »

benrapscallion wrote: post #119
3pt14159 wrote: post #79

I fixed my twitter feed by unfollowing anyone the first time something they did resulted in me being upset. Even if it was a like. It's just not worth it. For about a year or two my feed was great. Then the topics started coming in. First it was infosec and cybersecurity and they were fine for a bit so I tolerated it. But then it turned into just a bunch of hot women saying basically nothing. If before it was some ra…

I have found that the three best ways to use twitter are: - use Tweetbot or Twitterrific - subscribe to the feed in NewsBlur - use nitter.net In other words, don’t use twitter’s own website or app.

If you're on iOS/macOS, the new, open-source NetNewsWire[0] supports adding your whole follow feed, individual user feeds, mentions, and searches on specific terms.

https://netnewswire.com

https://github.com/Ranchero-Software/NetNewsWire

Re: Ask HN: What Has Happened to Twitter?

#123

Post by spaetzleesser »

Government communications really should not be be on Twitter or Facebook. There should be a central site where different agencies can put their announcements. If you don’t have to do advertising and satisfy investors I don’t think such a thing would be very expensive to create and operate.

Re: Ask HN: What Has Happened to Twitter?

#124

Post by CountDrewku »

3pt14159 wrote: post #79

I fixed my twitter feed by unfollowing anyone the first time something they did resulted in me being upset. Even if it was a like. It's just not worth it. For about a year or two my feed was great. Then the topics started coming in. First it was infosec and cybersecurity and they were fine for a bit so I tolerated it. But then it turned into just a bunch of hot women saying basically nothing. If before it was some ra…

>I fixed my twitter feed by unfollowing anyone the first time something they did resulted in me being upset.

I'm not sure this is a good thing. I agree that you shouldn't be constantly hammering yourself with upsetting things but I don't think the polar opposite of avoiding anything you disagree with or get upset about it mentally healthy either. I think this could lead to you just being overly sensitive to anything that makes you a little emotional. Although, maybe you get enough "disagreement" in you regular life to balance it out.

The best option is to learn how to better deal with you emotions. For younger generations that aren't going to be able to avoid social media as well this might be the only option for them since that IS their entire social interaction in many cases. It's definitely harder though and the way social media berates you constantly maybe our minds aren't able to handle such a barrage.

Re: Ask HN: What Has Happened to Twitter?

#125

Post by ascagnel_ »

heurisko wrote: post #114
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter is kind of disintegrating, though. I have never seen a for-profit social networking site that is immune to this on a long enough timeline. They all degrade eventually. By following what the money wants from users , not what the users want. > "The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and sim…

> They all degrade eventually. By following what the money wants from users , not what the users want. I wonder what would happen if Twitter said "OK, we are going to charge $5 dollars a year" to use it. Maybe it would not only be an improvement, but also viable from a business perspective.

App.net tried to do this, and failed miserably.

The Twitter "firehose" (all public tweets, delivered in real-time) is likely very valuable for news, research, and marketing interests; charging for access to the firehose is possibly a workable business model, and by limiting it to public tweets, side-steps many of the issues around privacy and user tracking (since the people writing the tweets are doing so with informed consent, even if individual tweets may be sent in error).

Re: Ask HN: What Has Happened to Twitter?

#126

Post by riidom »

1_player wrote: post #3

You can read directly linked tweets or the first few posts of a Twitter page but as soon as you interact with the page or try to navigate elsewhere, you get prompted for a login. So technically they're not preventing access, but they nag you incessantly after you've scrolled past the fold.

It's a QoL improvement, exclusively for people without accounts. It's a great move. And no, I'm not sarcastic. I mostly visit twitter when a link is posted here (or other places occasionally), and thanks to that anti-timestealing service, I read the original tweet, the 4 top comments and then I get friendly reminded to close the tab again. Perfect!

Re: Ask HN: What Has Happened to Twitter?

#127

Post by dragonwriter »

> I thought courts already decided in the US that the public has a right to access official government communications on social media.

They have not.

They have ruled that when a government actor uses social media for official communication, the government actor involved cannot also restrict access to and interaction with that content in ways that they would be prohibit from limiting access to official government communications not made on a private platform (e.g., by engaging in viewpoint discrimination), applying the limited public forum doctrine which is much older than the web.

Re: Ask HN: What Has Happened to Twitter?

#128

Post by pc86 »

I added two extensions that made Twitter 10x better: 1) Minimal Twitter, 2) Bot Sentinel.

Minimal Twitter lets me disable all advertisements, all topics, have a chronological feed, etc. Each of these things is individually toggleable so if you want topics but want to get rid of everything else, you can. It also makes the UI much better.

Bot Sentinel makes it easy for me to unfollow people who are constantly liking, retweeting, or replying to disruptive/misinformation accounts, or when they themselves drift into that area. It's not perfect. Completely normal, kind accounts who happen to be politically active and on the more conservative side will often have a higher disruption/bot score despite never doing anything disruptive themselves. I assume it's some NLP algo in the background lumping them in with the crazy misinfo bots based on some words in their tweets but really who knows.

Re: Ask HN: What Has Happened to Twitter?

#129

Post by logicalmonster »

ltfey wrote: post #59
dijonman2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right or wrong Twitter has censored at least one government official. It will happen again. The platform has no integrity.

I despise Donald Trump but I think this was a mistake. The failure of January 6 removed any short-term danger Trump presented, so there was no immediate need to ban the guy. At the same time, the use of a dodgy ban to censor an unpopular, failed public figure normalized the concept of private companies deplatforming people for political reasons--something they will use against the left more than the right, going forw…

> normalized the concept of private companies deplatforming people for political reasons

Maybe there's an earlier example I can't think of, but I don't think this trend started with Trump. I think this trend really started with Alex Jones. Once it becomes acceptable to ban anybody for ideas, then nobody can be considered safe from the chopping block. That was the freedom of speech test that civilization failed.

> the far-right, who are far more adept at using it than anyone else

What property of social media makes it so that people on the right are more skilled at using it?

And how can you tell the difference between "people on the right are more skilled at social media" and "better ideas simply win out"? Which one is true if they both explain reality?

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