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Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

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Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#22
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN'ers all agree ;) that modern day journalism is filled with hyperbole and unsubstantiated information.

This started a long time ago, I remember during the Bush/Gore election the media using "some people say" as a intro to a topic, as if those words validated the entire thing and had to be responded to. Might have started earlier as well but I didn't watch much US news before that.

1926 would like to introduce you to the National Enquirer. [0]

Not the first, but the first that came to my mind...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Enquirer

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#25

Simpler: stop showing tweets just because other people liked them. That's not a reshare, so it shouldn't be treated that way. More generally, discourage large conversations and encourage fragmentation.

It's not just that. Timelines are generally unavoidably toxic. It's not going to stop people from retweeting things and then shouting about it, or writing condescending, smug threads starting with "We need to talk about ...".

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#26
>The entire episode was a microcosm of Twitter’s larger problems [...] everyone yelling, and no one talking

This isn't meant as a dig at Twitter, but humans simply have limits to how many active participants a conversation can have at any one time. If people start talking on twitter instead of yelling, engagement metrics are going to drop through the floor.

In your experience, how many people can be in a room and all participate in one conversation before they split into more than one group, or an audience/panel dynamic forms? Twitter's design is such that there are so many silent participants to every interaction, that any conversation is stressed to the breaking point if even a tiny percent of them choose to say anything.

I don't understand what jornos think twitter is and/or could be. As far as I can tell, they want themselves and celebrities to post self-promotion and overton-window-approved nonsense care-free, and then have the crowd act as a mass of sycophantic yes-men.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#27
post #21

Just add a damn dislike button. Don't let obnoxious ideas go without punishment.

Why not just unfollow/block the person if you dislike their tweets?

According to that logic I should follow every single person I agree with as well. Which is silly, and I should not be encouraged to block every person I disagree with.

The like button exists for a reason. It's a simple interactive button to register my positive feeling towards a given statement. That exists unto it self. Why should a dislike button not exist as well? With no way of showing disagreement with a statement, people take to words and that's why they're yelling at each other. There's no other outlet.

The reason they're not putting in a dislike button is because negativity feeds tweet activity.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#28
Personally, I would let users decide for themselves if they want to see metrics at all, as well as favorites, retweets, and replies from other accounts. That way, they wouldn't be forced to come across content from people they've never intended to see. Just get new users through a quick tour in which all these options are showcased and be transparent in regards to what they do.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#29
Dorsey (from the article) : “I also don’t feel good about how Twitter tends to incentivize outrage, fast takes, short term thinking, echo chambers, and fragmented conversation and consideration.”

But what has he done to fix the problem, besides tiny UX tweaks that go nowhere, and the occasional ban of a highly visible jerk? Twitter is on fire, and he just plods along.

Dorsey, in this article, is about as believable as Mark Zuckerberg saying "we have to get serious about privacy."

The prototype that the article mentions exemplifies this attitude. Twitter needs to reinvent itself, but the prototype offers tiny fixes - threaded replies and helpful profile cards. These are needed, but does anyone really think they are going to solve outrage on twitter?

The outrage problem is the product of twitter's core design. It combines 2-way conversations with a context-free public soapbox and rewards comments that make people nod in agreement. Solving this would mean redefining what twitter is.

Dorsey won't do that, and so he's not serious about the problem. Maybe he can't be serious because it would hurt their profits. The best we can do is delete our accounts, disinvest, and hope twitter burns to the ground.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#30
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just unfollow/block the person if you dislike their tweets?

According to that logic I should follow every single person I agree with as well. Which is silly, and I should not be encouraged to block every person I disagree with. The like button exists for a reason. It's a simple interactive button to register my positive feeling towards a given statement. That exists unto it self. Why should a dislike button not exist as well? With no way of showing disagreement with a stateme…

I never said anything about agreeing or disagreeing. I suggested unfollowing/blocking someone if you dislike their tweets. Your timeline only has posts written by or endorsed by people you choose to follow. If you don't like what they are writing or endorsing, you don't have to keep them on your timeline. There's no rule that says you have to listen to "people tak[ing] to words and... yelling at each other"; you have the option to stop listening. You are in control of your timeline.

Also, if you want to get rid of posts people you follow liked, most (if not all) 3rd-party apps don't show them. Some apps like Tweetbot and Twitteriffic even allow you to remove tweets with specific words from your timeline, or filter retweets.

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