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I resigned from Twitter

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Re: I resigned from Twitter

#431

Post by duxup »

jrsj wrote: post #303
duxup wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>allow the platform to mature What does that mean? The medium is the message and Twitter is curt, prone to exaggeration / outrageous / mean spirited content.... and the people on there EAT IT UP. What is going to mature?

Censorship and more algo driven content discovery to push ads and approved narratives. Dorsey was probably the biggest advocate for free speech amongst the CEOs of any major company & Twitter is significantly less toxic than Facebook partly because of him. I fully expect his removal to lead the company in a more dystopian direction.

I don't know what anyone means exactly by censorship anymore.

Like someone regularly posting obvious lies and bs?

I feel like I need an exact example from every person when the topic comes up, and that's not really easy to do.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#432

Post by mattnewton »

wonderwonder wrote: post #420
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…

I think they are a symptom, not the root. The root started before them with the advent of pay per click advertising. Everything else has spiraled from that. I truly believe that the massive divisiveness of the last 2 decades can be traced to this. Social media echo chambers, youtube rabbit holes, click baity headlines, all of it is because of pay per click advertising. The ML algorithms we have now have become so eff…

But I think calling it pay-for-click is a misnomer, that's just the latest version of a very old business model. Cable news, like Fox, has had the same outrage-fueled engagement metrics that predate the internet, and before them there were newspapers doing the same thing. I think the technology of social media is just creating small efficiencies in an existing business model preying on very old aspects of human nature.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#433

Post by crocodiletears »

Tycho wrote: post #384

Prediction: more censorship and narrative protection incoming.

This is my concern as well. Twitter already has significant issues with this. But based on Dorsey's Rogan appearances I get the impression that he was never entirely comfortable with playing the arbiter of truth/acceptable content outside of high profile cases. He deferred to his trust and safety team most of the time, though you can still find a lot of enclaves that a platform like facebook might have preemptively purged.

His successor could very well be much more aggressive in this respect.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#434

Post by Dumblydorr »

rich_sasha wrote: post #424
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…

While I agree printed media is biased and is a medium for propaganda, it's hard to argue it's comparable in scale or effectiveness to social media.

1) in the Renaissance, literacy was much lower, books were scarce and expensive, and writing was often made in Latin, like the original bibles and Newton's Principia Mathematica. Therefore, print had MUCH less reach than social media.

2) the attentional cost of a book is vastly greater than a tweet. Tweets are designed to be simple and read in seconds; books are often complex and take weeks to digest.

3) due to 2, I feel Twitter's discourse evolves and devolves much, much faster into extremism and bullying and bad behaviors. It takes a long time for book disses to reach their target, not so for Twitter.

I could go on, but suffice to say, social media is an exponential notch above printed media in it's potential misuse and damage to society.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#435

Post by ckastner »

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…

> 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.

Those are indeed elementary factors, but I think that Twitter's effectiveness stems from how it enables tribal thinking and actively nourishes it with its algorithmic ranking.

It's one gigantic outrage machine, and few things are as addictive as outrage.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#436

Post by nostrademons »

handrous wrote: post #111
afavour wrote: post #7

I have no particular beef with Dorsey but I think this would make sense. He's been CEO of both Square and Twitter for years now and no matter what time you wake up in the morning or however many specials diets you undertake you're not going to be able to give the focus a solo CEO is. I think the bigger issue is who gets to replace him: will it be someone with smart ideas or someone to serve as a puppet of activist in…

I've noticed that lots of C-suite and owner/CEO startup people have like three to five active business roles on their Linkedins. A fun case of "rules for thee, but not for me" when it comes to anti-moonlighting clauses and such. I can't "give it my all" if I take some weekend gigs, but you can hold two C-suite positions, be on two boards, plus have an "advisory" role with some startup? It's a lot like drug testing fo…

Much of the value that a CEO adds is in figuring out which rules can be broken without adverse consequences. They're accountable for results; if they raise shareholder value doing terrible things but never get caught, that's a win for shareholders, and they get to keep their position. If they do get caught, they get to be the fall guy, they resign, the board gets to say "We are shocked that such things occurred, we had no knowledge of it, the guilty parties have been sacked, and cleaning up the mess they made is a top priority for the organization." Witness Uber, Volkswagon, Boeing, and Wells Fargo.

The moonlighting employee has the same options. Don't get caught. If you do get caught, you get fired, just like the CEO.

This is also a good portion of why CEOs get paid so much. The average person doesn't like to inhabit the Hobbesian reality that CEOs do, where they're accountable for results and any bad things happening are automatically their fault. They want a world where if they take the right actions and follow the rules, they get some reasonable amount of security. Employment is basically a way to create an artificial island of "if you follow the rules, you get paid", at the expense of the company capturing much of the value you create. Most people take this bargain, because they value security over maximizing profit. Those who don't are always able to take the opposite side of the trade, and become an owner/executive, at the cost of being exposed to all the risks of the real world.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#437

Post by cletus »

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…

Another case of blaming a symptom rather than the cause.

The media began showing Tweets because Twitter had reached a sufficient audience size. The real problem is the audience size.

Stroustrup famously said [1]:

> There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.

I'd paraphrase this about communication platforms (including social media, Reddit, forums, etc):

> There are only two kinds of communication platforms: the ones where people are reactionary, argumentative, tribal, incendiary, conflict-seeking, virtue-signaling and just downright mean and the others too small for that not to have happened yet.

[1]: https://www.stroustrup.com/quotes.html#:~:text=%22There%20ar....

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#438

Post by throwaway894345 »

sanderjd wrote: post #371
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.

My problem is that "person" is a broader category than I want to unfollow. There are precious few people whose posts I want to see all of. Most people I have ever followed exist somewhere on a continuum of what proportion of their tweets I want to see. It would be nice to have more positions on the knob than 100% and 0%. What I'd really like would be to say "don't show me tweets like this from this person". Yes it's…

Agreed. There are a lot of people and companies that are very important in the tech world who espouse repugnant racial ideologies a few times per year as the prevalent political fashion demands. I'd like to not block half the tech world, but I'd also like to hide their sporadic, vapid, ideo-tribal signaling posts.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#439

Post by [deleted] »

basisword wrote: post #160
johncena33 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is THE social media I am not able to use without letting it affect my mental health. Anytime I logged into Twitter, I came out more angry, bitter and outraged. It's like the whole platform is built around hot takes, dunking, bullying, and outrage. It always baffles me how mainstream media never utters a word how toxic Twitter is.

Completely agree. On top of that, even if you avoid the politically charged stuff, there is just a staggering amount of bullshit. “Thought leaders” with tens of thousands of followers all tweeting the same broad ideas as if they’re original thoughts.

[deleted]

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#440

Post by Waterluvian »

danschumann wrote: post #219

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

I think Twitter can amplify what we seek (whether consciously or not). I found the complete opposite: it built tremendous confidence as I went from 0 to thousands of followers who were interested in my parenting+comedy niche.
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