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

telegraph.co.uk

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

#211

Post by yahnusername »

I wrote a firefox plugin that removes likes/follows/upvotes/hearts style vanity counters from a bunch of websites. It absolutely makes them better to use. This is a good change.

I had a middle-of-the-road idea in this area too, which is to replace the number with the magnitude. So you still get the feedback from the vanity metric, but it happens with logarithmic decay.

A more detailed write-up (and repo for the plugin) for those interested: https://github.com/a13o/disengaged/wiki#replace-vanity-count...

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

#214

Post by collyw »

pornel wrote: 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…

It pisses me off when a Twitter storm is reported as "news". Lazy journalism.

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

#215

Post by madeofpalk »

pjc50 wrote: post #165
madeofpalk wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on all the people commenting “f” on Facebook to subscribe, I don’t think this would actually change anything.

Surely "f" means "pay respect to", or is that a different meme?

Different - they mean “follow”. Facebook will send you notifications from threads you’ve commented on.

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

#216

Post by slouch »

ElectronShak wrote: post #47
pornel wrote: 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…

For a long time i thought the idea that my reply, not a quote, just a reply, to a tweet gets posted to my main timeline / follower's timelines...is also a bad idea, but I guess this also was designed for 'engagement' too

Your followers will only see your replies if they also follow the account to which you're replying or if someone they follow retweets the parent or your reply. Otherwise, users will have to visit your profile and slide over to the Tweets & Replies tab.

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

#218

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

gambler wrote: post #170
bitL wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to debate getting worse and worse I left both Twitter and Facebook (they both became completely useless and just a waste of time); now it looks like most of low-quality "I am here too doing trivial things, applaud me!" posts moved over to LinkedIn, so I put my account to "passive" state there as well and am considering removing it altogether. Are there still some places left on Internet for high-quality discussio…

>Are there still some places left on Internet for high-quality discussions? Web forums. There are good ones. They are independent of one another. Most forums I visit are centered around some subject, so people are bonded enough to be reasonably civil even if they disagree. Most aren't big enough to require much moderation. The best one have zero rules and very little trolling, but those are usually completely devoid…

I’ve always found forums to be really helpful when searching for a topic but these days when compared to a voting system, forums feel dead or slow to update. I get that the voting system of get to the top is toxic and typically produces poor content but it does seem to work to an extent (for example HN).

I guess maybe forums feel a bit too heavy duty with all of the additional user stuff built into the stream of replies instead of having to click them.

What if HN didn’t show a number of votes and all the topics ranked based on invisible votes? I wonder if a system that’s more simple like that would carry over to forums to make them feel more modern but true to their roots?

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

#219

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

dvtrn wrote: post #198
fiala__ wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon is cool, but it's far from immune to mob mentality – see Wil Wheaton thing a few months ago: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/31/17801404/mastodon-harassm...

I don't believe anything is immune from mob mentality as long as impulsive, emotional human beings are participating.

I believe visible scores are the only reason for mob mentality. Take away the pluses or the minuses and the numbers attached to them and heard mentality weakens. You still have some attachment from surroundings opinions but to a much lesser extent. At that point the behavior shifts from micro to macro, from a single post to the whole platform. HN is the perfect example of this.

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

#220

Post by RodericDay »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #206
zeroname wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"You must be part of some sort of culture war on Twitter." Everything can become a culture war on Twitter. I follow a somewhat abstract modernist composer’s Twitter, which so far has been entirely about music and performance dates, and now it is up in flames because someone has decided to drag this artist into MeToo movement polemics. It has also been pointed out that a lot of discussion forums for the arts and liter…

> someone has decided to drag this artist into MeToo movement polemics

curious lack of detail. sounds like an euphemism for "accused them of sexual harassment" or "accused them of supporting a sexual harasser".

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