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I resigned from Twitter

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Re: I resigned from Twitter

#451

Post by tcoff91 »

cletus wrote: post #419
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…

The real problem here is people, not the platforms or the products. How do I know this? Because the problems have existed far longer than any of the platforms. Maybe people here are too young to remember how toxic, argumentative, irrational and judgmental everything else was that came previously: forums, mailing lists, Usenet, you name it. Sure products can influence user behaviour but they can't totally change it. A…

I'm sure people were saying the same things about the printing press as people are saying about social media. People were printing pamphlets in the 1800s that were just as crazy as any of the misinformation we see online today.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#452

Post by brewdad »

alpha_squared wrote: post #422
brightball wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I don't think eyewitness video is the biggest problem. When @LGBrandon8534932 gets their tweets posted on the evening news and it's treated the same as a statement from Dr Fauci. THAT'S a problem.

Hyperbole. But not by much.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#454

Post by hellbannedguy »

drjasonharrison wrote: post #410
sAbakumoff wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, feeling of novelty causes a dopamine spike, but shortly afterwards the level is back and we feel like they need more new stuff. Mindless purposeless scrolling may last hours and hours. Twitter is bad, but Tik Tok is the worst. Remove all this stuff from your phone and read HN instead. Here you at least should focus on sophisticated comments like yours!

Please don't use dopamine to explain addictive/repetitive behaviors. It's like blaming your eyes for finding the button to click. It's more complex. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/women-who-stray/20...

Plus most medical doctors know modern Psychiary, and the brain, are still a mystery. Psychiatry is art. Yes all medicine is an art, but psychiatry takes tie cake.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#455

Post by munificent »

BurningFrog wrote: post #367
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is a social medium.

The more I think about this, the less I agree. To be a social medium/network, I think you need to follow/"friend" specific people. That's what makes it social. I'd say HN is a "forum". I realize these are my personal definitions, and there are no correct answers.

I don't think a binary definition is meaningful. Instead, what I focus on is the continuum of how much control you as a user have over the content that is presented to you.

At one end, you have the default Reddit front page. You get a torrent of posts completely unrelated to your specific interests or people you care about. It's as close to "the front page of the Internet" as you can get. Like staring into the collective psyche of the web.

At the other end, you have Google search. You only see pages you specifically request for by an explicit search query at that point in time. If you don't search, nothing is given to you. You have almost complete control over your attention.

Social media sites/apps are generally points between those. Critically, most give you more flexibility in how you use them than users get credit for. If you use Reddit by just browsing the front page and not even logging in, yes, it's the worst of all possible worlds. But if you create an account, unsubscribe from all the default subreddits, and only follow subreddits that are interesting to you and well moderated, then you have a lot more control. My Reddit experience is uniformly positive and enriching.

Twitter can also be a nourishing experience, but you have to be careful about who you follow, and turn off retweets for most of the people you follow.

Facebook is harder but if you disable all posts from sites that users often reshare, that removes a ton of clutter. Unfollowing people also helps.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#456

Post by sAbakumoff »

drjasonharrison wrote: post #410
sAbakumoff wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, feeling of novelty causes a dopamine spike, but shortly afterwards the level is back and we feel like they need more new stuff. Mindless purposeless scrolling may last hours and hours. Twitter is bad, but Tik Tok is the worst. Remove all this stuff from your phone and read HN instead. Here you at least should focus on sophisticated comments like yours!

Please don't use dopamine to explain addictive/repetitive behaviors. It's like blaming your eyes for finding the button to click. It's more complex. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/women-who-stray/20...

OF COURSE it's more complex than this, the human's brain is a very sophisticated machine. But I just read a couple of "brain for dummies" books[1][2], so my knowledge is pretty limited.

[1] - "Behave" by Sapolsky [2] - The Willpower Instinct

From that I recall they explain that the reward system responds to feeling of novelty because it's good for survival, f.e. you can find food or water source in a new location or maybe notice a hostile animals there. So, it's a behaviour caused by evolution. Twitter, Facebook, etc. just exploited it. And they admitted it:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/09/facebook-...

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#457

Post by yupper32 »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #58
notyourwork wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you like it to happen? Twitter schedules a formal press conference to announce it or otherwise?

YES! You don't leak it to a reporter like it's the latest variant of the iPhone. There should have an announcement from the board, a LONG time before markets were to start (ideally end of markets on friday) clearly explaining WHAT is happening and WHY (even if it's a bullshit reason, there should be a reason). It would have allowed markets to absorb the news instead of the NYSE having to halt trading amid the uncerta…

I don't get it. Who cares? You sound like you just want the status quo.

Sending a tweet works just as well to get the message out.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#458

Post by Nasrudith »

systemvoltage wrote: post #238
danschumann wrote: post #219

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

Twitter and largely social media encourages echo chambers. I try to be a contrarian on HN but in some threads, especially around social justice and political threads, it definitely has a tendency to become one. When 10 people are agreeing vicariously and there is a sense that any dissent is crushed, time to be the person playing devil’s advocate and challenge them. This can happen in a small context and it usually is…

I don't get it, isn't social media is an anarchic free for all compared to traditional media publications? Newspapers were infamous for excluding other points of view especially when drumming up panic and not including "here is why that is a load of crap" letters to the editor.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#459

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

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.

I have a very short list, like 150 or so. I add people one or two at a time, and see how my TL responds. If it starts skewing sideways, I unfollow. I find this very successful.

What kills me are the brand accounts. Like, McDonald's: 4.3M followers. For what? Why are you purposely asking for advertising in the middle of your advertising?

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#460

Post by pmcp »

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…

As someone who started working at an ad agency during the online metrics boom, then went to a national news organisation to work as digital strategist, I tend to agree.

But I would pinpoint it to the inflated value of impressions. My experience (but i can not back this up) tells me that ad sellers tend to over estimate the impact of an impression, which makes the value chain completely inflated, and skews the business model. If ads were worth less (and, according to me, closer to the real value), less money would go round, and creating value for the end user would become more a necessity.

But I might be wrong, obvs.

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