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

I resigned from Twitter

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 1001 posts

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#421

Post by vmarsy »

535188B17C93743 wrote: post #275
juancampa wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a tip on how to make the best out of Twitter: unfollow anyone that makes you feel that way. Think about it, it's not Twitter per se, it's the people you follow, and that's under your control.

Until they start suggesting friends of friend's tweets. Or random trending/suggested tweets. Or you might like your friend's tweets but get fed with all of their garbage "liked" content and can't filter that out.

> but get fed with all of their garbage "liked" content and can't filter that out.

I definitely filter those out.

About once every 6 months the tweets "liked" by people I follow pop up again, it's usually very noticable as the feeds quality turns down dramatically.

To get rid of those, I do the "..." > "I don't like this tweet" > "show fewer likes from XYZ" on 2 or 3 tweets, and they're all gone for another few months.

It's not ideal, a settings menu where you can disable those permanently would be far better, but it works.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#422

Post by alpha_squared »

brightball wrote: post #373
spion wrote: post #352

Twitter and other social media are probably the biggest problem of our time. By providing simple rules of information flow: small amount of content, retweet, followers) and rewards (likes), they've created the most efficient engines for finding and spreading novelty at the expense of everything else. There are no incentives to improve accuracy, increase thoughtfulness, paint nuance. Fact checking gets lost in the win…

Where it all went sideways was when mainstream news started showing tweets on air. EDIT: I need to add clarification. I don't mean when breaking news gets onto mainstream channels. No question that happens. What I mean is the use of a single tweet with maybe 1 or 2 likes here or there to reflect public sentiment on different issues. All any news station had to do was fish through the pile of tweets about any given to…

Mainstream news used to have a near-monopoly on access to events and crime scenes. The advent of smartphones with ever-improving cameras gives the average citizen, who's there in the moment, first access. Twitter just happened to be the medium with lowest barrier to sharing that, but it would've happened regardless. As stations couldn't keep up with the "breaking" part of news, it just made sense (unfortunately) to adopt the share-what-others-say model and talk about that instead.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#423

Post by rtkwe »

dnautics wrote: post #230
danschumann wrote: post #219

Twitter made me feel: some combination of violated, indignant, numb, inferior, empty, powerless, disappointed, embarassed, furious, annoyed, and infuriated.

I used to feel that way, but I aggressively moderated who I follow in a purge, and being selective about who I add as follows. It feels like it's easier to marie-kondo people I don't care for anymore in twitter since there's little-to-no-expectation that I know anyone on twitter, and for me, anyways, twitter is a much more pleasant experience than any other social network has been.

Yeah, that's the trick to Twitter definitely. You're very much in charge of what you see there beyond the tricks you have to pull to get retweeted items out of your feed.

I really wish there were more aggressive options to do that in lists, some people have great content but retweet an insane amount of things as well and it'd be nice to be able to exclude those from a list but not universally across the whole feed like you can with block words.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#424

Post by rich_sasha »

spion wrote: post #352

Twitter and other social media are probably the biggest problem of our time. By providing simple rules of information flow: small amount of content, retweet, followers) and rewards (likes), they've created the most efficient engines for finding and spreading novelty at the expense of everything else. There are no incentives to improve accuracy, increase thoughtfulness, paint nuance. Fact checking gets lost in the win…

Is the is very different to what newspapers were when they first appeared?

Of course they never achieved the same technological pace. Also, nowadays, when you think of newspapers, you think mostly of quality publications, writing considered, contextualised pieces.

But even nowadays, there are plenty of crappy tabloids chasing ad revenue (clicks?), with no regard for information and only about the shock factor. And in the past it was much worse, since the whole cesspit of attention-grabbing was contained in newspapers and pamphlets.

Tech changes, humans don’t.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#425

Post by throwaway894345 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #310
dnautics wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to feel that way, but I aggressively moderated who I follow in a purge, and being selective about who I add as follows. It feels like it's easier to marie-kondo people I don't care for anymore in twitter since there's little-to-no-expectation that I know anyone on twitter, and for me, anyways, twitter is a much more pleasant experience than any other social network has been.

Aggressively unfollowing people is the only way to keep Twitter useful. I think the mistake people make is approaching Twitter follows like they would friendship links on Facebook or other platforms. You don’t have a relationship with the people you follow. Don’t hesitate to let it go. The loudest people on Twitter are often the worst at providing actual value. They optimize for clickbait and engagement, which can tr…

I agree that it's possible to curate a good Twitter experience, but it's concerning to me that Twitter is hostile by default. I'm not sure if it's trying to promulgate a specific repugnant ideology or maybe it tries to provoke everyone equally (e.g., for engagement), but in either case it seems socially harmful. And to be clear, I don't mind that it shows me a lot of content from people with whom I disagree (even forcefully), but I do mind that the content it boosts is the lowest quality argumentation (calling it "argumentation" is too generous). For example, in a recent high profile self defense case, Twitter didn't boost any legal expert analysis, but it did boost the d-list celebrities and popular journalists (and their vitriolic followers) whose views don't survive even the slightest encounter with the evidence. And to be clear, the issue isn't that it's promoting this stuff to me (I have thick skin, apparently), but that it's promoting it to everyone by default, such that it is a systemic problem.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#426

Post by smolder »

marcinzm wrote: post #315
busterarm wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media can be fixed by legislating it out of existence. It doesn't even need a watchdog agency like the environment does.

Define social media? Does discord count? Does mastadon count? Do forums count? Does hacker news count? Stack overflow? Github?

All of those do count, but many people have a narrower definition because of how the term "social media" is often shorthand for Twitter, FB, IG, and similar when used in the traditional media.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#427

Post by HNTA_1 »

mathattack wrote: post #11

The stock popped 10%. Is this a vote of confidence against him or for whoever has been waiting in the wings? There has been enough agitation against him by the activists that this can’t be a surprise.

The past few years the stock market has been so divorced from reality that I wouldn't read too much into it.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#428

Post by busterarm »

jacquesm wrote: post #340
busterarm wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media can be fixed by legislating it out of existence. It doesn't even need a watchdog agency like the environment does.

What makes you think HN is exempt from that? If you feel it needs fixing by killing it then why are you participating in it, and by extension validating it rather than arguing for that fix?

I could survive without HN. The internet existed before it. We had things like webrings and mailing lists that were highly personal forms of communication & aggregation.

You could even find content that you wanted online before Google made search pay-to-play.

Killing social media and requiring services (like email, etc) not be an ad-supported free model (where the product is the user) would completely transform the internet (and its balance of power) as we know it and for the better.

SomethingAwful charging $10 for an account was always/accidentally the right idea.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#429

Post by lvl100 »

I personally think Jack is grossly out of touch with reality. Even when it comes to crypto, he refuses to support anything outside of BTC. Twitter is still the best medium for real-time news and information dissemination. Hopefully they can keep that going.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#430

Post by bonestamp2 »

brightball wrote: post #373
spion wrote: post #352

Twitter and other social media are probably the biggest problem of our time. By providing simple rules of information flow: small amount of content, retweet, followers) and rewards (likes), they've created the most efficient engines for finding and spreading novelty at the expense of everything else. There are no incentives to improve accuracy, increase thoughtfulness, paint nuance. Fact checking gets lost in the win…

Where it all went sideways was when mainstream news started showing tweets on air. EDIT: I need to add clarification. I don't mean when breaking news gets onto mainstream channels. No question that happens. What I mean is the use of a single tweet with maybe 1 or 2 likes here or there to reflect public sentiment on different issues. All any news station had to do was fish through the pile of tweets about any given to…

I think that's a symptom and not the root cause. The root cause was when we stopped paying for news with money and started paying for news with clicks. That changed how news was gathered, reported, and shared.
Post reply on HN