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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

#241

Post by tempxvbx »

gowld wrote: post #193
Pharmakon wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be the simple answer for Twitter, but the simple answer for everyone else is to avoid Twitter. It should be clear thst broadcasting yourself thst way is inherently unwise in most cases, and that’s even before you add in the toxic community and “engagement first” platform.

It doesn't help much if I avoid Twitter, when all the major news media outlets think that Twitterers are the vox populi, and use it to source their articles.

This is lazy or mendacious journalism.

A few Tweets are quoted to give the impression of widespread outrage.

Tweet embedding is a negative value feature that’s helping to corrode regular journalism, and that seems to be of very limited value.

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

#242

Post by city41 »

donatj wrote: post #118
jobigoud wrote: post #61

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…

I’ve often thought only being able to down vote with a comment would be a positive. There have been times where I have had posts down voted to hell, and legitimately have no idea why. I think having to tell someone why you were down voting would be an improvement. Maybe even work at so down vote comment doesn’t count if it it self has negative karma.

I think this stems from downvotes being abused. If a comment is well written and constructive, you should not downvote it just because you disagree with it. The real intent of downvotes is to flush away off topic and low effort comments.

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

#243

Post by danso »

gambler wrote: post #180
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.…

I think Twitter's move to 280 characters led to a massive improvement in overall quality -- I rarely find myself bumping into the limit, and I find that threaded tweets can read as well as short articles. A good use of the format can be found in the BBC's "Anatomy of a Killing" investigation into a military killing in Cameroon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18060709

I enjoy and have learned more from the discussions on HN than on any other platform. But what Twitter lacks in quality it more than makes up for in diversity and quantity. There's no where else I can get into a discussion/argument with anyone from Elon Musk to randos in Indiana and India all in the same thread. As crappy as the discussions can get, I have a hard time imagining how much better any such service could be without making tradeoffs on audience and ease of engagement. Mastodon, for example, seems to have limited scope and scale inextricable in its design. Which is not to say that that makes it a worser service -- just one that is inherently different from Twitter's model.

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

#244

Post by marbletiles »

orasis wrote: post #114
orasis wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...and the above was instantly downvoted. Communities that use downvotes become blind to self-criticism.

Watch people here flock approvingly around a PG thinkpiece about the value of "unsayable opinions", though. It's like grappling smoke.

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

#245

Post by danso »

dang wrote: post #240

There's some doubt about this: https://twitter.com/TwitterComms/status/1056913093471670273 http://fortune.com/2018/10/29/twitter-like-button-staying/

Yeah, there's no reason to believe that the Telegraph would have the exclusive scoop on this. Even in the few sentences shown in the paywall preview, it's clear how thin the sourcing is:

> Founder Jack Dorsey last week admitted at a Twitter event that he was not a fan of the heart-shaped button and that it would be getting rid of it “soon”.

That's the only news or "fact" in the lede -- the content that immediately follows is boilerplate:

> The feature was introduced in 2015 to replace “favourites”, a star-shaped button that allowed people to bookmark tweets to read later. Similar buttons to “like” or show appreciation of people’s status updates, pictures and videos have become a central function of every popular social media service since Facebook introduced them.

> But psychologists have suggested that they may be causing social media addiction.

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

#246

Post by xemoka »

madeofpalk wrote: post #215
pjc50 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand why facebook isn't better at determining the intent of the message: hide messages with "following" "f" or whatever and just subscribe the user to notifications—which they could have done otherwise if the option was made more obvious.

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

#247

Post by dcre »

strictnein wrote: post #231
dcre wrote: post #212

This story is not true. https://twitter.com/TwitterComms/status/1056913093471670273

Where does that say it isn't true? > "As we've been saying for a while, we are rethinking everything about the service to ensure we are incentivizing healthy conversation, that includes the like button. We are in the early stages of the work and have no plans to share right now."

They are not removing the like button.

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

#248

Post by SyneRyder »

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.

You were essentially correct - the Favorite button in third party apps got rewired to the Like heart button. Favorites were previously only visible to yourself, the person whose tweet you favorite, or anyone who specifically went looking for your list of Favorite tweets.

(I think making Favorites/Likes act like retweets was a terrible idea - thankfully I never saw them in third-party apps, but it made the website a horrible experience when you see what the people you follow were liking.)

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

#249

Post by gambler »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #218
gambler wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 repl…

>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.

Voting systems create a lot of bad incentives. They encourage groupthink and filter bubbles. They discourage long-running conversations. I haven't felt that boards are "slow" if there is reasonable amount of new threads and posts per day.

The usual trouble with forums is that a lot of admins don't understand how to split one up into boards. They either create way too many, and those sit empty, or not enough, and then it's hard to keep track of conversations.

Maintaining the optimal number of boards and optimal average thread size are keys towards a healthy forum that doesn't seem empty, or overwhelming.

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

#250

Post by joering2 »

Imagine how better Twitter would be have they had a "downvote" button like Hacker News!

I mean how many times getting downvotes taught you how to behave on HN?

Long time ago I once posted a joke; it was good and funny joke even somewhat related to subject. I got downvoted into oblivion. I scratched my head for a while but then realized I do the same thing - even if I chuckle at someones good joke, I cast my vote of thumb down to remind them in order to keep quality engagement on HN, don't post jokes! I eventually figured out it was a venue thing. You may be the funniest guy in the word, but if you go to church people expect you to remain in silence and/or pray, not make jokes.

Twitter used to be really great and then few months ago I just gave up on it. I follow few people that spew hate rhetoric. I watched them posting their stuff about Clinton's emails over and over again. Sometimes getting stupid answers, sometimes being ignored and sometimes actually seeing people putting time and effort to answer and explain. These individuals were not interested in your response! They were there just to post their rhetoric like a contest who scream louder in empty echo chamber! I know that HN downvote button would help cleanse Twitter because with few thousands posts per second, obviously nobody will decide manually how valuable the tweet is.

Being downvoted on Twitter would mean first your posting frequency goes down. Then it could mean your post is sliced to 210 char (half of original 420). Finally you could be jailed automatically for 3/7/14/31 days. I mean there is so many ideas to get folks post quality content or GTFO that its surprise management allowed Twitter to slide this low. I am sure I am not the only one who gave up on Twitter, or perhaps to Twitter bottom line (ad $), it doesn't even matter.

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