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Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

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Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#41
post #10

The BBC, with its explicit "public interest" mandate, funded by public money, is constantly criticised for being simultaneously too deferential, opinionated, conservative, and liberal - and that's only in the UK. How on earth is Twitter going to make a policy that pleases worldwide shareholders, governments (and their oppositions), and the general public? Maybe I lack imagination, but it feels like Twitter is constan…

It's already fragmenting. The far-right has essentially left the platform at this point, the mainstream-right is feeling a strong pull in that direction I think.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#42

Remove the ability to have followers from world leaders, remove the ability to be liked from world leaders' tweets. Keep the ability to retweet world leaders' tweets, but prevent retweets to be added more from the retweeters.

If anything, for any politicians Twitter account, it should hide follower count, and for all their tweets, it shouldn’t allow likes/retweets/replies. Essentially their accounts should serve strictly as a broadcast of info, and nothing more.

By "shouldn't allow likes/retweets/replies" do you mean by the politician or by the followers of the politician?

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#44
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really overestimate the level of importance that everyone else places on whatever it is you have to say.

Yeah, this is Twitter, not Cultural Revolution China. Jack isn't Mao with his Hundred Flowers campaign.

Do not underestimate the limits of Jack's desire for control

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#46
post #31
post #10

The BBC, with its explicit "public interest" mandate, funded by public money, is constantly criticised for being simultaneously too deferential, opinionated, conservative, and liberal - and that's only in the UK. How on earth is Twitter going to make a policy that pleases worldwide shareholders, governments (and their oppositions), and the general public? Maybe I lack imagination, but it feels like Twitter is constan…

Twitter's problem is engagement. Facebook is a doomscroller's paradise. How can Twitter replicate that?

Facebook, when I used to use it, felt like a reasonably structured glut of content. Twitter on the other hand feels like a poorly structured glut of opinions. I sometimes can't even differentiate between the original tweet, the reply, and I find it hard to know how many replies there are. It feels like trying to have a coherent conversation in the middle of an old fashioned stock exchange - virtually impossible - I think twitter's UI is at least partly to blame for this.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#47
On Twitter you can find promoted full blown propaganda paid for by hostile (to the US at least) state sponsored news agencies and government officials. These same governments ban Twitter in their own countries and would never allow similar content on their own platforms. Twitter's solution here is to insert a tiny "State affiliated" footer text below the account name.

Can you imagine in the Cold War-era NBC being allowed to broadcast propaganda ads bought and paid for by the Soviet Union?

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#48

Be a free speech platform, how about that?

Except maybe it's a bit more complex than your ridiculously simplified pithy one-liner.

Seriously, what the fuck is that even supposed to mean? It's literally duckspeak – a reflexive slogan uttered without any thought. It elides all of the complexity of understanding what free speech is, or what a platform is.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#49
post #46
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's problem is engagement. Facebook is a doomscroller's paradise. How can Twitter replicate that?

Facebook, when I used to use it, felt like a reasonably structured glut of content. Twitter on the other hand feels like a poorly structured glut of opinions. I sometimes can't even differentiate between the original tweet, the reply, and I find it hard to know how many replies there are. It feels like trying to have a coherent conversation in the middle of an old fashioned stock exchange - virtually impossible - I t…

I think Twitter's problem is that there isn't enough feel good content. Facebook shows you the dark pattern engagement content, but they also have pictures of your family, kids selling girl scout cookies, 10 minute videos about how to turn ramen noodles into a combine harvester, etc.

Twitter only has the dark pattern engagement content and it makes people sick after too long. Maybe they should buy a Flicker type platform just to try and tone down the outrage a bit.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#50

On Twitter you can find promoted full blown propaganda paid for by hostile (to the US at least) state sponsored news agencies and government officials. These same governments ban Twitter in their own countries and would never allow similar content on their own platforms. Twitter's solution here is to insert a tiny "State affiliated" footer text below the account name. Can you imagine in the Cold War-era NBC being all…

Plenty of it by our own government and allies as well.

Maybe we can be a little more principled than "good guy nations" and "bad guy nations" if the goal is truth?

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