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

The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 142 posts

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#21

Post by onion2k »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion

What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? People write them, and publish them, and it'd be a bit unreasonable to assume they have some motive other that stating their opinion, so I don't really understand why you think tweets are something else.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#22

Post by User23 »

onion2k wrote: post #21
sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? People write them, and publish them, and it'd be a bit unreasonable to assume they have some motive other that stating their opinion, so I don't really understand why you think tweets are something else .

I believe the parent's point is that many of the opinions people tweet are somehow illegitimate. I won't hazard to guess what criteria or authority is supposed to determine legitimacy.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#23

Post by briandear »

skybrian wrote: post #6
moneytide1 wrote: post #3

Social media does away with the good ole natural moderation that happens if someone belches out a self centered monologue in a public space and immediately receives glares and scoffs from strangers within earshot.

Ever been to a large meeting when there's a hot political issue? People can be nasty in person too, unless there is very good moderation, and sometimes even then.

The recent Cupertino City Council meeting about Valco had this on vivid display: 9 hours of vitriolic nonsense.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/19/differences-of-opinio...

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#24

Post by eksemplar »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

The only people I know with twitter accounts are journalists. One friend in particular has a hard time understanding how you can function without twitter.

I tried using it, like most people, but when you work a job that doesn’t involve trolling the internet for news, it’s really hard to use twitter in any meaningful manner.

You’ll post something and a few days later you’ll have time to post a reply. Or you’ll follow a few interest points and miss everything they post because you don’t visit every hour and it’ll drown in the feed if you don’t.

I honestly think all the regular people on twitter are either unemployed or spending so much work time on social media that they ought to be fired.

I like social media by the way, but I don’t think it has a lot of value when it’s done primarily with strangers. I mean, my friends use Facebook groups and events to organize stuff and it’s really, really good at that. We use discord/WhatsApp chats to keep in touch on day to day chitchat - which would be better in person but we live in different cities/have children etc. So that sort of social media is great.

But talking with strangers? I mean, I’m home in bed with the flu right now, and we’re having this conversation, except I can’t be sure you’ll ever read what I post or if you’ll find it interesting or reply, and even if we do get to have a talk, we’ll likely never have another one. So it doesn’t hold a lot of real value aside from wasting time, and that’s kind of what twitter is all of the time.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#25

Post by eksemplar »

skybrian wrote: post #6
moneytide1 wrote: post #3

Social media does away with the good ole natural moderation that happens if someone belches out a self centered monologue in a public space and immediately receives glares and scoffs from strangers within earshot.

Ever been to a large meeting when there's a hot political issue? People can be nasty in person too, unless there is very good moderation, and sometimes even then.

Mostly stupid/unsuccessful people. The elite is very good at disagreeing with each other on a polite manner.

I work in the public sector, as a manager who is on a board that designs suggestions for our national digitization strategies. I know how to play the game now, but the most eye opening thing to me when I was starting out was how people disagree at those levels of society.

If you want to say that you think something is a bad idea, you sugarcoat it to hell and back, focusing first on complimenting your counterpart on where you think they are successful. Then you politely present your view and the facts that support it.

In public it’s different, here you’ll sometimes get heated for the audience, but you’ll still be beat friends once the cameras stop rolling.

The reason behind this is that the world evolves around compromise.

These days you’re seeing more and more people who don’t understand how necessary compromise is, but hopefully we’ll kick them out before we destroy our democracy.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#26

Post by dstick »

User23 wrote: post #22
onion2k wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? People write them, and publish them, and it'd be a bit unreasonable to assume they have some motive other that stating their opinion, so I don't really understand why you think tweets are something else .

I believe the parent's point is that many of the opinions people tweet are somehow illegitimate. I won't hazard to guess what criteria or authority is supposed to determine legitimacy.

What I read is that random tweets gain extra credibility by being shown on a big screen on a news show. And they’re cherry picked to support whatever topic and angle is being covered.

You could go out on the street; but finding and then having someone say something on camera is -very- different to finding and showing a tweet. I feel pretty confident in saying that a lot of people tweet stuff they’d never say live in front of a camera.

Hence the argued bad practice of presenting tweets on news shows as well thought through and relevant opinions.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#27

Post by friedman23 »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

>I have no problem.

Yet you are on hacker news. After some reflection I've realized that hacker news and reddit are just as bad for me as facebook is to others. I am reading unfiltered opinions from all people and I don't think that is particularly valuable or healthy.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#28

Post by watwut »

dstick wrote: post #26
User23 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the parent's point is that many of the opinions people tweet are somehow illegitimate. I won't hazard to guess what criteria or authority is supposed to determine legitimacy.

What I read is that random tweets gain extra credibility by being shown on a big screen on a news show. And they’re cherry picked to support whatever topic and angle is being covered. You could go out on the street; but finding and then having someone say something on camera is -very- different to finding and showing a tweet. I feel pretty confident in saying that a lot of people tweet stuff they’d never say live in…

> Hence the argued bad practice of presenting tweets on news shows as well thought through and relevant opinions.

Why would they be irrelevant? It is opinion that people think. It migh be wrong, but they still vote on that, choose schools on that, make decisions and judgements about real life people around them etc.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#29

Post by ryandrake »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #17
GW150914 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I connected quite a bit earlier, mostly Usenet and BBS’, and when EFnet came along a lot of that. People like to talk about Eternal September and other depredations of communities, but the truth is that while things functioned more smoothly earlier on, it was always a bunch of people and people more or less act like warring groups of primates. If someone had come back from the future and only told us about the extent…

BBSes were never as great of an advertising buy as an image-adjacent to an Instagram pic. Nobody looking at a BBS could anticipate why BBSes would eventually vanish, while Instagram is truly here to stay.

Depends on how you define "here to stay." All fashions come and go. I am willing to absolutely guarantee that there will be no trace of Instagram in 50 years, maybe it would vanish in 20 years. It could be irrelevant even earlier than 10 years. Same with Twitter, Facebook, and other so-called giants. 50 years ago, Woodstock didn't even happen yet. A lot changes in that amount of time.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#30

Post by sonnyblarney »

onion2k wrote: post #21
sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? People write them, and publish them, and it'd be a bit unreasonable to assume they have some motive other that stating their opinion, so I don't really understand why you think tweets are something else .

"What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? "

It's not about the legitimacy of the tweet or even factualness.

When journalists want to create a fake narrative, what they do is say "people are saying this" and then show a few tweets to support them. Even though almost nobody really may be thinking in those term.

For example, there's a lot of social justice clamour over things like award shows lately. The thing is, people don't care that-that much. They may a little, they might have some nuanced ideas one way or another, but the 'journalist' reporting will say: "People are really upset about so-and-so's comments" - and then show a few tweets of either random people or celebs.

Individual tweets are not remotely representative of anything, and yet they are used as 'representative' data points all the time.

Not only do journos do this in purpose (i.e. willfully misrepresenting) but I think they are actually influenced by the Twitterverse. I really do think that many in the press think that Twitter is real or representative.

Post reply on HN