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Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

telegraph.co.uk

101–110 of 278 posts

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#101
IMO, "Like" is just one of the ways for users to express themselves, you remove this tool, they'll find other ways, e.g., flood with one-word replies.

Account with huge number of followers that can block counter accounts could create an echo chamber, which is rather poisonous to a healthy debate.

That being said, I don't think twitter should be used as an debate platform, and there are some online tools trying to solve the problem already, like Kialo. They perhaps are not good enough, but still better than twitter.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#103

"Like" was ruined when Twitter made it republish tweets, making it practically identical to retweet. It had been useful to mark posts for later review. Without it at all, there will be no way to "save" a tweet.

You can now turn off likes-as-retweets in your timeline.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#104
post #20

I don't think quality of "debate" on Twitter can be salvaged. Everything was designed for "engagement" and turned out to be rage-inducing machine. Quote-retweet is used to send followers to harass the person responsible for the awful tweet. RT is choir-preaching (you're a monster if you don't RT that kicking babies is bad), and replies to twitter-celebrities' tweets give everyone their 15 minutes of fame to post the…

I find Twitter delightful again but I needed the following settings:

Media Preview: Off

Reduced Motion: On

Video Autoplay: Never

Increased Contrast: On

I also mute lots of accounts. It took a few months of muting anyone who replies with animated GIF or says negative things like “thanks for lecture” etc and I’m back to a well tuned information machine.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#105
post #46

Reminds me that Kierkegaard seems to have written about social media: "Man, this shrewd being, ponders day and night how he can invent new means to amplify the noise and how he can spread the sound and the empty talk as hastily as possible everywhere. What one achieves in such a way is probably soon the opposite: the message is soon brought to its lowest level of fullness of meaning, and at the same time, conversely,…

I love Kierkagard even more after reading this. I can't find the quote after a few targeted searches, where is it from? Thanks for sharing

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#106
post #68
post #36

Reposted every time it's relevant: https://twitter.com/actioncookbook/status/684515262712967170... "USERS: we love twitter but it has problems TWITTER: great we'll fix them USERS: do you want to know what they are TWITTER: absolutely not USERS: you're alienating the people who actually use your product TWITTER: likes are now florps USERS: what TWITTER: timeline goes sideways" (The irony is that likes used to have a c…

Here's what I'm thinking when companies remove votes or scores or whatever: They're just hiding the problem. Like, people still like the stuff, it's just no longer tracked. They sure as hell won't stop tracking views or whatever. Which are likely (heh) just a factor removed from "likes". The problem is that you're giving fake news the power to dominate million's of people's twitter feeds if you're just ruthless enoug…

This isn't a sarcastic question nor an attempt at snark: have you ever moderated a message board, forum, subreddit, facebook group, etc. with decent post traffic? It's tough. Even something that has a hyperfocused topic (e.g. a subreddit for dogs with sunglasses riding skateboards) will have naysayers of what should and shouldn't be allowed. Someone posts a pic of a dog. It doesn't have sunglasses, but it does have on yellow-tinted glasses for reducing eye-strain on monitor. Oh and it's not riding a skateboard. This dog is on a self-balancing scooter.

Most of your users won't care. They'll enjoy the content. Someone chimes in that the sub or forum is no longer pure. The content is similar, but it's off-topic. The board is going to devolve into just pics of dogs (which is a legitimate concern). Other people defend that the board needs content, and that computer glasses and a scooter is similar enough to be inclusive. So where do you plant you flag? Will there be a zero-tolerance policy for anything that isn't a dog wearing sunglasses riding a skateboard (OMG mods are literally Nazis!!!), do you allow users to flag posts for review on a case-by-case basis (need more mods), or do you relax the content restriction (this board is trash since it lost its focus!)?

Twitter has no focused topic. The platform is for anyone to communicate whatever they want within reason. With disparate cultures than span every corner of the globe, how do you stop the problem from existing in the first place? Not everyone has the tolerance for scathing, brutal honesty. How do you draw the line between that and bullying? How do you differentiate between well-intended people who are misinformed and people spouting propaganda? I don't have the answer, but my time moderating forums about topics that have no impact on society has taught me that it's pretty much impossible to create a perfect platform that appeases everyone.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#107
post #20

I don't think quality of "debate" on Twitter can be salvaged. Everything was designed for "engagement" and turned out to be rage-inducing machine. Quote-retweet is used to send followers to harass the person responsible for the awful tweet. RT is choir-preaching (you're a monster if you don't RT that kicking babies is bad), and replies to twitter-celebrities' tweets give everyone their 15 minutes of fame to post the…

You must be part of some sort of culture war on Twitter. My experience is completely different. I don't follow people engaging in these battles and I don't post things that would be an engagement. It really is smooth sailing from there. Or, in the words of Steve Jobs: "You're holding it wrong." I use the "like" button for bookmarking interesting things. It would be unfortunate if I had to lose that because people on…

Upvoted - not sure why a perfectly reasonable comment is greyed out. My experience is same as yours - I only follow data scientists and data visualization specialists and my experience is absolutely brilliant. I also discovered some really great technical posts on R using Twitter.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#108
Twitter suffers one simple problem: it conflates engagement with quality, and rewards people who create "engaging" content, rather than people who create "quality" content. So the problem isn't in what the users do; it's how Twitter filters the algorithmic feed to bring quality content to the top.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#109

It would be interesting to see how well upvote/downvote would work.

Just like here, it would quell community taboo opinions.

If you want to be downvoted to oblivion on HN, just try pointing out potential moral issues with a new technology.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#110

They should do like HN: keep the button but remove the counter visibility. I would like to see this generalized to all social networks actually. You still get to do an appreciation gesture but without entering the popularity contest. Maybe the author of the post could still see the total. YouTube "dislike" button on comments also works like this, you can dislike but it's not counted. In this case it's a bit stupid si…

try it out now: https://bengrosser.com/projects/twitter-demetricator/
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