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

Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 369 posts

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#41

Post by gfodor »

Dorsey to me has it half right. Twitter should just follow with what we typically do in real life: "follow" people, but masked by interests we trust those people about. I want to read about politics from the political analysts I follow, but don't care about their cooking adventures on the weekend. I want to read about tech from the software folks I follow, but don't want to hear about their politics. I sure as heck don't want to see "liked" tweets by people I follow in areas outside of the interests of theirs I care about.

Beyond that, I'm generally disappointed that we never hear about features that try to get users to act better, by their own volition, vs reactively shutting them down. Social media tools should help us understand the potential impact of our words and actions before hitting "Send". Only if you assume people are incapable of improvement, or that people are not fundamentally good, would it be fair to ignore the potential for sites like Twitter to design things so users will act better on their own vs having to be slapped down when they do something terrible.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#42

Post by gr2020 »

richmarr wrote: post #27
AimForTheBushes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter how many times I click "Show less of this" it keeps coming back.

Anyone who's in a position to use Tweetdeck instead of Twitter's web UI will find a free, Twitter-maintained, product with no annoying algorithms and no advertising. It's the version of Twitter targeted at newsrooms, etc. I assume a lot of people already know and have reasons why they don't... but likely not everyone here has tried it so it may be worth repeating. https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/

This has evolved quite a bit since I last tried it - thanks for the reminder!

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#44

Post by bhl »

riffic wrote: post #16

Organizations will eventually realize they can stand up their own social infrastructure (see ActivityPub). It'll be interesting to see how Jack Dorsey reacts to that. Edit: if anyone happening to read this works for Twitter or has the capability to pass a message to @jack, here's a free idea for a pivot to your business model: Offer hosted ActivityPub federation utilizing your existing Twitter platform. In other word…

ActivityPub doesn’t seem that mature as a framework yet. I myself got lost in the documentation.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#45

Post by whiddershins »

Interesting that the quoted “hard questions” about failure to remove Nazis is in direct opposition to the criticism Twitter has received on, for example, the second Joe Rogan interview.

When I view what Dorsey is saying through the lens of the Rogan interview, I don’t see a push towards “algorithmic feeds” which you have already, but towards something where the users actually have more control over what they see, not less. But it’s impossible to tell from these short quotes.

What’s fascinating is the ambiguity of goals and responsibilities Twitter has regarding “hate speech” and so forth.

The quotes in the article seem to indicate questions presuming toxic viewpoints need to have their platform removed, the questions in the Rogan interview work from the assumption stifling speech is bad, and Dorsey keeps saying he is concerned about the safety of individual users.

It’s bewildering because I’m not sure anyone really understands what anyone else is even trying to accomplish.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#46

Post by ordinaryperson »

claudiawerner wrote: post #20
ordinaryperson wrote: post #8

I don't understand why Twitter hasn't implemented some kind of reputation gradient that would allow users to filter by levels. Yes, I realize they are tricky to implement and subject to abuse but imagine you got points for using your real name, real photo, demerits for insults etc, then users could filter out hordes of trolls and gutter nonsense and instead focus on the meaningful conversations that do actually occur…

Personally I don't consider real name or real photo to be much of an asset of any of the circles I was in on Twitter. In fact, in my experience the ones with real name/real photo (or what seemed that way) were generally the least interesting posters. They were never willing to put out their own opinion, especially on controversial topics. In fact, in the kind of groups I was in (let's say political activism), having…

It's not a good heuristic for unique opinions -- sure (see: LinkedIn, the most horrifyingly boring social network feed). But it is if you want to filter out hate speech, which a lot of people do.

But my point is not real photos/names as the be-all, end-all. How about many heuristics, and let users filter accordingly? All this data available and none of it is used to improve the user experience, at least as far as I can tell.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#47

Post by ragebol »

I use https://twitterfall.com/ as my main interface for Twitter It just streams downward from the top, no need to refresh. It's not pretty but I like it.

Also, I don't recognize the issues lots of people have with Twitter, because I mostly only see the original tweets and only follow mostly sensible people that post interesting stuff (scientists, AI & robotics folks, tech journalists, some space exploration accounts).

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#48

Post by luckylion »

sverige wrote: post #19

> “It’s democracy at stake, it’s our culture at stake,” Anderson said. Christ, the self-importance of the Twitterverse is astonishing. What they don't say out loud is that Trump and Brexiteers and others they oppose have used the platform to effectively end-run the media, they hate that, but they can't figure out a way to stop them. A little bit of plain speaking would be refreshing.

Be happy that today it's not life on this planet or the universe itself that is at stake. ;)

In my experience, there are primarily three kinds of people that regularly claim there's a lot on the line, and it doesn't matter what their political views are. 1) young people that are inexperienced, 2) people that need to feel good about fighting for something important, and 3) people that exploit the other two by appealing to that. It's a good tactic to motivate your base, but like crying wolf, it loses it's effectiveness when done too often.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#49

Post by groby_b »

Look - Jack makes money of pushing upsetting content into everybody's feeds. It pushes up the enragement numbers.

Let's be clear here, he's not going to change it. He's going to continue to waffle around and pretend he wants to change, and it's not going to happen.

Can we stop giving air to these excuse publications?

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#50

Post by teraflop »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #36
baggy_trough wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Algorithmic feeds are, in all cases, Satan's handiwork. What I want is to see posts from the individuals I have selected, interleaved in chronological order, with no tampering.

If that maximized user engagement, then that is the UI they would present. The fact that they don't do that should tell you that their tests have shown algorithmic feeds are more engaging for users.

"User engagement" is not a single, well-defined, easily measurable thing.

For one thing, it's easy for A/B tests to show something that looks good in the short term, but has longer-term negative effects. If your goal is to iterate quickly and stop your test as soon as you think it shows a positive result, you'll never see that.

But more to the point, there's no guarantee that the "user engagement" metrics Twitter cares about are actually a proxy for what users really want. If it takes me more time and more clicks to find the information I want -- enough to be annoying, but not quite enough to drive me away from the site -- that probably gets counted as "engagement".

Post reply on HN