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Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)

antirez.com

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Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)

#41

Post by cvsh »

supremesaboteur wrote: post #24
feral wrote: post #7

Tech design choices can have profound social impact. This is just a personal theory, but I suspect Twitter's choices have done huge damage to Western Civilization, by forcing, as a medium, a very short 'soundbite' structure onto debate. (Even more so than the media which gave us the term 'soundbite' ever did!) So that sounds like a very overblown assertion, right? But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and a…

> But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and arguably he is the sort of President a platform like Twitter most directly enables. He gets direct unchallenged access to a mass medium This is actually not true. Many of Trump's claims are challenged on Twitter and outside of Twitter. Maybe you don't like that he can directly talk to the people rather than twist his words to suit your narrative before heading it…

Yeah it's less because of places where news spreads among the savvy like Twitter (and Reddit, and niche communities like HN) and increasingly more about the "last mile" of news -- the increasingly fragmented and ethically unconstrained ecosystem where people actually hear news from.

Facebook is, in my mind, much more culpable, being at the point of the spear for the radicalization of last mile news delivery.

Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)

#42

Post by sitkack »

What Antirez describes is magnified on Twitter but no means isolated to it. Cherry-picking and un-charitably attacking someones statements is a human flaw that everyone should seek to suppress. And it happens for a couple reasons

* Weak egos on part of the listener. They want to _take down_ or show their superiority by besting a famous or popular person.

* Over Criticality. Instead of waiting for the entire argument to jell, and trying to charitably [1] understand the persons argument, you find the first perceived hole and attack. Often arguing about things that aren't germane to the discussion.

* False Drama / Celebrity Association. This is the bullshitter who wants to be "involved in the argument" but doesn't really care about the argument or the outcome.

People forget that debate, as practiced in meat space is about winning, not using logic to present cogent arguments. So when Antriez gets beaten on Twitter, he losing the debate due other's rhetorical skill. Your mom.

[1] http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html

Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)

#44

Post by pjc50 »

sitkack wrote: post #38
pjc50 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very short 'soundbite' structure onto debate But as you say the traditional media do this too - and have been just as instrumental in the rise of Trump. The "false equivalence" media structure, and the direct promotion of right-wing editorial through Murdoch news properties, are also extremely important.

Propaganda is asymmetric, it takes more energy to communicate and rebut with Truth than it does to fabricate lies. Truth requires precision, clarity and subtlety; lies are a dead-blow hammer.

Yes. But this isn't new and certainly isn't specific to Twitter.

Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)

#47

Post by [deleted] »

feral wrote: post #7

Tech design choices can have profound social impact. This is just a personal theory, but I suspect Twitter's choices have done huge damage to Western Civilization, by forcing, as a medium, a very short 'soundbite' structure onto debate. (Even more so than the media which gave us the term 'soundbite' ever did!) So that sounds like a very overblown assertion, right? But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and a…

[deleted]

Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)

#48

Post by acdha »

supremesaboteur wrote: post #24
feral wrote: post #7

Tech design choices can have profound social impact. This is just a personal theory, but I suspect Twitter's choices have done huge damage to Western Civilization, by forcing, as a medium, a very short 'soundbite' structure onto debate. (Even more so than the media which gave us the term 'soundbite' ever did!) So that sounds like a very overblown assertion, right? But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and a…

> But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and arguably he is the sort of President a platform like Twitter most directly enables. He gets direct unchallenged access to a mass medium This is actually not true. Many of Trump's claims are challenged on Twitter and outside of Twitter. Maybe you don't like that he can directly talk to the people rather than twist his words to suit your narrative before heading it…

> Maybe you don't like that he can directly talk to the people rather than twist his words to suit your narrative before heading it over to the masses

It's telling that you chose to twist the original poster's words to suit your narrative with the least fair interpretation. Unchallenged doesn't mean that something gets edited to bits. Traditionally it just meant that, for example, a reporter would ask followup questions to expand an idea or attempt to get the subject to explain things they'd prefer not to discuss (e.g. “How will we pay for that?”), or that controversial claims would be presented with a response from a relevant expert.

Trump is obviously unwilling to submit his ideas to critical review (or even basic editing) and in that sense Twitter is perfect for him. He can hit send and millions of his followers read it without any barrier where someone says “uh, doesn't that contradict what you said last week?”.

Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)

#49

Post by sitkack »

pjc50 wrote: post #44
sitkack wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Propaganda is asymmetric, it takes more energy to communicate and rebut with Truth than it does to fabricate lies. Truth requires precision, clarity and subtlety; lies are a dead-blow hammer.

Yes. But this isn't new and certainly isn't specific to Twitter.

The channel capacity is full of false. So responding takes more than one tweet of true. The medium of twitter makes it hard to rebut anything but the most simple statements.

Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)

#50

Post by ygaf »

subpixel wrote: post #33
supremesaboteur wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and arguably he is the sort of President a platform like Twitter most directly enables. He gets direct unchallenged access to a mass medium This is actually not true. Many of Trump's claims are challenged on Twitter and outside of Twitter. Maybe you don't like that he can directly talk to the people rather than twist his words to suit your narrative before heading it…

Just yesterday I looked at Twitter to read up about a back and forth between two developers I respect. I was reminded that Twitter makes it well-nigh impossible to follow multiple sides of a conversation. (Of course, calling what happens on Twitter a conversation is a stretch to begin with.) Much of the time, when a tweet says that it's 'in reply to' someone else, the specific tweet it was meant as a reply to is not…

I never got started with twitter, because it just didn't make sense, without a bit of practice using it at least. Thanks for confirming it is a general mess.
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