Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 64 posts

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#41

Post by basch »

mschuster91 wrote: post #30
basch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's just not true. slashdot taught us you can intake data, have humans tag it with metadata, and then let the viewer sort the data based on their own preferences and parameters. and that it works really really well. reddit/hackernews are a simplification of that idea brewed down to just upvote/downvote/flag. twitter is unnavigatable by itself in any sort of abstract high level way. that doesnt mean you cant use so…

> reddit/hackernews are a simplification of that idea brewed down to just upvote/downvote/flag. HN has the unique advantage that it's a niche board. This means that the userbase is small, which makes moderation infinitely easier, because the pool of potential trolls just is extremely small. Reddit has solved this problem by shifting the moderation load to volunteers for each subreddit. Of course, that can go south to…

reddit and hackernews both use human moderation, as did slashdot, as and I mentioned it in my comment. Human metadata generation (this comment is good, funny, wrong, sad, incomplete etc) is a great first step in turning a sewer into a watertower.

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#42

Post by basch »

oblio wrote: post #33
basch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's just not true. slashdot taught us you can intake data, have humans tag it with metadata, and then let the viewer sort the data based on their own preferences and parameters. and that it works really really well. reddit/hackernews are a simplification of that idea brewed down to just upvote/downvote/flag. twitter is unnavigatable by itself in any sort of abstract high level way. that doesnt mean you cant use so…

I'm pretty sure reddit is operating at a loss, as is hackernews. You need better examples :)

so what? sometimes public services cost money. the comment i was replying to mentioned connecting humanity without creating a sewer, not profit.

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#43

Post by saji13 »

So this article claims the problem with Twitter is that advertisers don't bring in enough money because of hate speech in Twitter. This is just absurd, any sources on that claim?

Why would advertisers care of the content? They are scared people would associate the company to the hate tweets?

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#44

Post by Super_Jambo »

mc32 wrote: post #7
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

There's a bizarre focus on Larry Page buying it for whatever reason. Sounds almost like a plea. But hey, let's imagine that's possible - why do we want Google guy to run Twitter, too. What does that solve? Google has already tried and "failed" in the social area, Page buying it doesn't strike me as some kind of panacea. What this election cycle has proven to me is that the old media and rapidly more and more of the n…

I can only agree that newspapers believing themselves as impartial is hilarious, given the agenda many of them openly push, from industrialists, to liberalists, to patriots, etc. For much of their existence their purpose was to promulgate a PoV. Maybe the NYT does suffer from hubris thinking it's been immune from the same. They very well may be better "now" but even then it's a stretch to believe they thought that it…

Well clearly one of the ideas they're very keen to push is that they're performing a civic duty not just acting as cheer leaders for their particular masters.

If this idea was not believed then they'd have a far harder job peddling their bias as interesting fact.

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#46

Post by mxuribe »

ThomPete wrote: post #40

Twitters problem is simple, they are a router not a destination. The simple fact that you are linking to an article but not debating it on twitter unless you really hit some nerve is why they cant make money. 140 chars dictatorship have hindered them doing any real innovation and the puritans unfortunately have been able to slowly choke twitter.

+1; totally on point!

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#47

Post by bbctol »

ThomPete wrote: post #40

Twitters problem is simple, they are a router not a destination. The simple fact that you are linking to an article but not debating it on twitter unless you really hit some nerve is why they cant make money. 140 chars dictatorship have hindered them doing any real innovation and the puritans unfortunately have been able to slowly choke twitter.

Is that really their target, though? I think of twitter as a place for communities, where people react, tell jokes, and have conversations. It's not a place for serious debate, but that might not be the problem.

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#48

Post by happyslobro »

namaemuta wrote: post #35

I can't believe how quickly you guys are jumping to the conclusion of letting twitter die. It has a lot of value for common people to report problems and make them being noticed. For example, I've lost the count of how many people have gotten a better deal with companies that in the first place offered them a bad service / product, just by publicly reporting them on twitter. Also lot of people get a quick support res…

I think that this real value will ensure that it never really dies. If anything happened to twitter.com, then dozens of little MVP short message boards would spring up. In fact, that might actually be an ideal outcome in the long run, especially if it leads to the formation of a standardized tweet data format and competing public APIs.

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#49

Post by mxuribe »

Hmmm...many comments stated in the article sound like someone clinging to old legacy not for utility but for mere nostalgia... "Twitter is a communications marvel..." internet and the web running over it are communications marvels with applications like twitter simply being an (as in, one of many) application that was somewhat useful back in the day.

"Twitter is not yet treated as hallowed, but it has the makings of an institution that could be." "Twitter is the first draft of journalism." "This computer-science problem — filtering out trolls — remains as difficult...technology would not only win back the advertisers who are fleeing because of trolls, but also, if shared, enable newspapers to reopen their comments’ sections at their own websites, promoting the airing of differing views in public space." while helping to de-anonymize trolls (at least a little, which might lessen their flames): don't have everyone jump into yet another walled garden; instead have everyone build up their own decentralized social network presence. So everyone has a presence online - either managed through their own website which runs a decentralized social network application/software, or maybe they pay a small fee to group onto a small community...this would help mitigate from a single platform failing and bringing down the whole "first draft journalism". This would also give each user the freedom to express themselves - without any constraints from twitter, etc. Its not perfect, and i'm sure there would be problems, but i feel this is the better direction forward.

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#50

Post by bogomipz »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

There's a bizarre focus on Larry Page buying it for whatever reason. Sounds almost like a plea. But hey, let's imagine that's possible - why do we want Google guy to run Twitter, too. What does that solve? Google has already tried and "failed" in the social area, Page buying it doesn't strike me as some kind of panacea. What this election cycle has proven to me is that the old media and rapidly more and more of the n…

>"What this election cycle has proven to me is that the old media and rapidly more and more of the new media censors things they or various friends of theirs don't agree with, and that doesn't sound like a path to a healthy society to me."

Can you mention some of the censorship incidents are you referring to here?

I think you made some interesting points. That NY Times quote is particularly condescending. I can't help but think theres a bit of schadenfreude from some of the old guard media regarding recent Twitter events.

Post reply on HN