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On Using Twitter

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Re: On Using Twitter

#51

Post by profvyas »

balaam wrote: post #42
mayankkaizen wrote: post #37

Earlier I used to follow all sorts of famous twitter accounts and had joined all sorts of (ugly debate). I really liked Twitter in comparison to FB in the sense that it introduced me people of millions types from all over the world. On FB, everyone was already known to me so there was no novelty in what I was browsing. However, later on I realized that Twitter is actually a "outrage generating machine". Everyone is o…

This is the best way to use twitter. You get a clear stream of useful, relevant content. Unfortunately this also gets framed as a "filter bubble". I want a filter bubble. The problem in practice is that twitter actively fights you doing this. It tries to pour raw sewage into your nice clean stream and you can't stop it. You see what other people have liked, or what's popular or lots of other things I don't want to se…

Twitter is a filter bubble in its entirety.

Re: On Using Twitter

#52

Post by tinyhouse »

The fact that the social justice conversation in America talks only about black people, as this post does as well, shows the majority of people only care about social justice issues when the minority group becomes big and loud enough.

I just skimmed through the article (it's long, I don't have time to read the entire thing). I completely disagree about her overall statement. I prefer not to talk politics in my public twitter account that is used to follow people on topics I'm interested in (politics is not one of them). That doesn't mean I don't comment on issues like police brutality, human rights, sexual harassment, etc. But for me those things have nothing to do with politics.

Re: On Using Twitter

#54

Post by Mindwipe »

balaam wrote: post #42
mayankkaizen wrote: post #37

Earlier I used to follow all sorts of famous twitter accounts and had joined all sorts of (ugly debate). I really liked Twitter in comparison to FB in the sense that it introduced me people of millions types from all over the world. On FB, everyone was already known to me so there was no novelty in what I was browsing. However, later on I realized that Twitter is actually a "outrage generating machine". Everyone is o…

This is the best way to use twitter. You get a clear stream of useful, relevant content. Unfortunately this also gets framed as a "filter bubble". I want a filter bubble. The problem in practice is that twitter actively fights you doing this. It tries to pour raw sewage into your nice clean stream and you can't stop it. You see what other people have liked, or what's popular or lots of other things I don't want to se…

> The problem in practice is that twitter actively fights you doing this. It tries to pour raw sewage into your nice clean stream and you can't stop it. You see what other people have liked, or what's popular or lots of other things I don't want to see.

Even with all the barriers in place, the truth is that Twitter still works better through a third party application.

Your feed comes through relatively unmolested, with just the things you want to follow in the order you want to follow them.

Re: On Using Twitter

#55

Post by softwaredoug »

I recently wrote about how political twitter is actually the opposite of activism[1].

In short, political twitter gives us false sense of agency. Really we're draining themselves of energy needed to do the real work in their lives. And frankly, we have so little control over political events in the end...

1 - https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2020/08/06/political-twitter-o...

Re: On Using Twitter

#56

Post by tonystubblebine »

tinyhouse wrote: post #52

The fact that the social justice conversation in America talks only about black people, as this post does as well, shows the majority of people only care about social justice issues when the minority group becomes big and loud enough. I just skimmed through the article (it's long, I don't have time to read the entire thing). I completely disagree about her overall statement. I prefer not to talk politics in my public…

Just FYI, that's not fact. The social justice movement talks a lot about trans people for instance. It's hard to go to a black lives matter event and not see black trans lives matter signs. And then literally, the post does mention gender and trans.

Re: On Using Twitter

#57

Post by bob33212 »

tarkin2 wrote: post #49

Twitter is mob media. It is only social in the most twisted sense of the word. Rarely do you interact in a positive way.

That is by design. I follow a security researcher who generally get 10-20 comments/likes on his posts. He and his girlfriend broke up. She has 50 follows on Twitter and posted something vaguely implying the break-up was because he was intimidated by her intelligence. He responded saying that it was more complicated than that. That generated thousands of comments. A lot of the comments were related to the me-too movement. The twitter algorithm must had know this would get people engaged and showed it to a lot of people. From a hundred words I have no idea if he was guilty of some sort of sexism or not, and I have no idea how anyone else could come to a conclusion either. But Twitter algorithm doesn't care about the quality of the conversation, only the fact that it keeps people engaged.

Re: On Using Twitter

#58

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

mayankkaizen wrote: post #37

Earlier I used to follow all sorts of famous twitter accounts and had joined all sorts of (ugly debate). I really liked Twitter in comparison to FB in the sense that it introduced me people of millions types from all over the world. On FB, everyone was already known to me so there was no novelty in what I was browsing. However, later on I realized that Twitter is actually a "outrage generating machine". Everyone is o…

Absolutely true on all accounts. Have deliberately removed the app from my phone and logged out on my browser - it was satisfying for a time, but I found myself frustrated with the drama and conflict. I'm convinced the people who are speaking in good faith are absolutely dwarfed by those yelling in bad faith. The medium doesn't lend itself to debate, instead it's just brief snippets of outrage. It's a really poor communication tool for anything actually worth communicating about.

Re: On Using Twitter

#59

Post by faitswulff »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #56
tinyhouse wrote: post #52

The fact that the social justice conversation in America talks only about black people, as this post does as well, shows the majority of people only care about social justice issues when the minority group becomes big and loud enough. I just skimmed through the article (it's long, I don't have time to read the entire thing). I completely disagree about her overall statement. I prefer not to talk politics in my public…

Just FYI, that's not fact. The social justice movement talks a lot about trans people for instance. It's hard to go to a black lives matter event and not see black trans lives matter signs. And then literally, the post does mention gender and trans.

Right. GP is factually incorrect. The blog post notes a few axes (hence the term intersectionality) commonly under consideration in social justice spheres, most of which are not solely about black people (though there are black people who experience all of the variations along these axes):

> I’m a white, cis, female, straight, abled (currently; this can change) US citizen with a PhD, raised by parents with advanced degrees.

Gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, citizenship, education, and affluence, respectively. Another notable one would be incarceration status, at least in the USA.

Re: On Using Twitter

#60

Post by rgoulter »

balaam wrote: post #42
mayankkaizen wrote: post #37

Earlier I used to follow all sorts of famous twitter accounts and had joined all sorts of (ugly debate). I really liked Twitter in comparison to FB in the sense that it introduced me people of millions types from all over the world. On FB, everyone was already known to me so there was no novelty in what I was browsing. However, later on I realized that Twitter is actually a "outrage generating machine". Everyone is o…

This is the best way to use twitter. You get a clear stream of useful, relevant content. Unfortunately this also gets framed as a "filter bubble". I want a filter bubble. The problem in practice is that twitter actively fights you doing this. It tries to pour raw sewage into your nice clean stream and you can't stop it. You see what other people have liked, or what's popular or lots of other things I don't want to se…

> ... Unfortunately this also gets framed as a "filter bubble". > I want a filter bubble.

I think describing a "topic-focused, outrage-free" curation strategy as 'filter bubble' is somewhat asinine.

"Filter bubble" is a dirty term because it suggests at best an isolated, distorted view of how things actually are, at worst active exclusion of valid dissent. The point is that important details aren't being noticed in the domain of what has attention.

I understand a lot of outrage comes from righteous minds who want to make the world a better place (or prevent it from becoming a worse place). -- All the same, just excluding outrage feels more like it's (at worst) ignoring 'allegedly important, unrelated things', rather than ignoring 'important, related things'.

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