Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: 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…

That's exactly how I use likes it's an archive of all the cool art I've seen so I can go look again later! Guess I'll finally go find a plugin or tamper monkey script to download them now since twitters interface makes it impossible to right click save images if there's more than one image in a post?

Really 90% of twitter for me is either liking great art or getting depressed by the news/US politics. Take away the art and twitter gets a lot less appealing.

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

#172

Post by danso » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 1:59 PM UTC

ihuman wrote: post #149

conscion wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an option to bookmark tweets. They then show up in your bookmarks section. https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/product/2018/...

Wasn't "Like" originally bookmark? Have we gone full circle? Edit: I was thinking of favorites. I used favorites as bookmarks, so I got it mixed up.

Bookmark has a different connotation. Also, bookmarks, unlike Likes, aren't public.

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

#173

Post by Kye » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 1:59 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #131

mortenjorck wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simple answer to this problem has been clear for awhile: Make responses to quote tweets opaque to the original author. 1. Bob quotes a tweet from Alice he thinks his followers will find enraging 2. Bob's followers reply to the tweet with predictable outrage and abuse 3. (present system) Twitter becomes unusable for Alice as she is flooded with mentions from all of the angry and abusive replies to Bob's quote 3. (…

I don't see how it has been "clear for a while" that this is the solution to all of twitter's problems. > 3. (proposed system) Alice is not shown any of the replies to Bob's tweet. Bob's followers scream into the void. The problem of online harassment is not (mainly) that the service UI becomes cumbersome to use for the victim. It's that everyone else can observe they are harassed and the victim loses control over th…

>> "Your proposal would actually make this effect worse, because the victim wouldn't even notice anymore they are harassed."

There's a perspective where this is a good thing, but I think I know where you're coming from. I've seen people on the receiving end of these attacks who say they still want to know about it so they know about any tangible threats.

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

#174

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #171

pjc50 wrote: 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…

That's exactly how I use likes it's an archive of all the cool art I've seen so I can go look again later! Guess I'll finally go find a plugin or tamper monkey script to download them now since twitters interface makes it impossible to right click save images if there's more than one image in a post? Really 90% of twitter for me is either liking great art or getting depressed by the news/US politics. Take away the ar…

DOM inspector! Also useful for saving videos.

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

#175

Post by tomatotomato37 » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

Does a platform originally developed to post every random witty thought you come up with on the loo really need to improve the quality of debate? I feel like it would be better to acknowledge the fundamental design is incompatible with serious debate and try to steer it back towards the place for frivolous shitposting

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

#176

Post by danso » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: 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…

I disagree that Likes had that "clear, simple use" case. I for one didn't use it as a bookmark, simply because I used it so often for the other case you cite: "telling the poster that you liked it" -- including for tweets that were relatively trivial: e.g. "I appreciate that you replied to my tweet".

I follow several thousand users so I guess the timeline algorithm doesn't bother showing me Liked activity. However, I do see "[some user] and 5 others liked this tweet" when I do a search for tweets, and I find that note to be more helpful than not, to be honest.

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

#177

Post by sctb » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

liftbigweights wrote: post #48

The hypocritical media and leftists: Social media is evil because it spies on you and it manipulates you. The same hypocritical media and leftists: Social media is evil because it doesn't spy on you and manipulate you the way we want it to. The hypocritical media and leftists: Net neutrality is a human right. Everyone should have equal access and opportunities on the internet. The same hypocritical media and leftists…

Could you please stop posting generic political flamebait? It doesn't belong on the site because it makes things dumber and more aggressive and we really just want to learn something instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#178

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 2:07 PM UTC

netcraft wrote: post #137

mortenjorck wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simple answer to this problem has been clear for awhile: Make responses to quote tweets opaque to the original author. 1. Bob quotes a tweet from Alice he thinks his followers will find enraging 2. Bob's followers reply to the tweet with predictable outrage and abuse 3. (present system) Twitter becomes unusable for Alice as she is flooded with mentions from all of the angry and abusive replies to Bob's quote 3. (…

I think there are certainly scenarios where this would be useful and preferable, but there is a quote-tweet use case for wanting to mention something to the people you follow but add your own support or opinion in good faith - it allows you to comment with at least a little context. But this is probably me trying to salvage twitter for the non-toxic purposes and its probably a losing battle. The fact that what you pr…

[deleted]

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

#179

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #174

rtkwe wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly how I use likes it's an archive of all the cool art I've seen so I can go look again later! Guess I'll finally go find a plugin or tamper monkey script to download them now since twitters interface makes it impossible to right click save images if there's more than one image in a post? Really 90% of twitter for me is either liking great art or getting depressed by the news/US politics. Take away the ar…

DOM inspector! Also useful for saving videos.

My first thought is to just modify the CSS on the next and previous divs that are pasted over the pictures in galleries to shrink them so I can just do the normal right click. That's the actual issue the picture isn't the top element so right click doesn't work. Till now I've been doing basically what it DOM Inspector looks like using Chrome's inspect element. It's a bit annoying to have to do every time though.

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

#180

Post by gambler » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

Chazprime wrote: post #27

If Twitter genuinely wants to improve the quality of debate online, perhaps they should consider shutting it down.

Pretty much. Their design isn't just bad, it's perfectly bad.

No content structure. No context. No sense of "discussion spaces". No way to post longer, more nuanced messages. Encourages garbage in messages. (Tags, emojis, @something should be external. The more stuff like that you put in message, the less they look like actual statements made by people. This dehumanizes authors in subtle but extremely important ways.)

People always underestimate the extent to which UI design and content structure drive communication tone. Sure, just because some website is messy doesn't mean it will immediate make everyone a jerk, but this stuff has cumulative effect. As a way of example: try to write a long paper letter to someone by hand. You will immediately see how that changes the way you think.

Also, people should check out Jaron Lanier's talks on why everyone should delete their social media accounts. He doesn't talk about UI, but he makes some great points about economic incentives, behaviorism and emergent properties of ad-driven online economies.