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I resigned from Twitter

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Re: I resigned from Twitter

#641

Post by tqi »

nend wrote: post #385
ChuckMcM wrote: post #259

It will be interesting to see how Twitter changes as a result. Twitter with selective following and setting your timeline to 'time order' creates a pretty good environment for me. It feels like the equivalent of living in only a few chosen 'subreddits' rather than getting the full frontal reddit experience.

This seems to hold true for many social media sites: facebook, reddit, twitter. It takes effort on behalf of the user to make their experience on the site "better". And by better I mean, less divisive, and less mindless scrolling of memes/low effort content. Thinking about it from the business's perspective, it probably ultimately also lowers their user engagement metrics. Users get a higher quality experience using…

I don't think it's necessarily a business incentives/metrics thing. Rather I think a social media experience can be at most 2 of 3:

- Uncensored/unmoderated

- Encompasses all viewpoints

- Civil

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#642

Post by [deleted] »

dionian wrote: post #359
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…

What's worse, is it has ushered in a Technocracy, where unelected corporate interests now decide which political views are "misinformation" and, for example, may threaten "election integrity", which drugs doctors should prescribe, etc.

[deleted]

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#643

Post by chx »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #321
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.

Remove Section 230 protections for profit driven social networks, carve out exemptions for public goods and other sites operated without a profit intent (Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, Hacker News, etc) and the problem solves itself (the cost to police/moderate the platform rises above a point where the revenue returned is no longer sufficient to make the endeavor worthwhile). Social media is toxic due to the socia…

OK, Facebook is now a non profit which only income comes from selling ad space to "Definitely Not Facebook Inc" at such a price which avoids racking up profits. (Like ad house of old.)

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#644

Post by jedberg »

smolder wrote: post #374
jcadam wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it can be fixed. Social media in general is a cancer.

HN is not what I'd call cancer. Social media doesn't need to be an engagement-obsessed, emotionally charged misinformation hose. Social media is broader than the category that twitter and FB live in. It can be less toxic, but less toxic platforms are less exciting and don't get the same kind of attention , which is what all the toxic stuff optimizes for.

HN is not for profit. In fact, it's purposely a loss leader. They can afford to be heavily moderated because they aren't trying to appease anyone but their specific small, targeted audience.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#646

Post by sanderjd »

JasonFruit wrote: post #503
jacobr1 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seems like you could throw some work toward figuring this out. They already have a start - they push following categories. So presumably they are categorizing individual tweets into these categories. It should be feasible to both provide finer-grain categories, and tooling to include/exclude how those intersect with those accounts one is following.

The link between categories and the tweets assigned to them is weak. I puzzled over a political tweet categorized under Science until I realized that it included the word "reaction". (Or something like that.) That's a frequent occurrence. I unfollowed categories.

Oh yes, but they should simply do a much better job at this :)

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#647

Post by 999900000999 »

smolder wrote: post #374
jcadam wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it can be fixed. Social media in general is a cancer.

HN is not what I'd call cancer. Social media doesn't need to be an engagement-obsessed, emotionally charged misinformation hose. Social media is broader than the category that twitter and FB live in. It can be less toxic, but less toxic platforms are less exciting and don't get the same kind of attention , which is what all the toxic stuff optimizes for.

HN it's both highly regulated, and focuses on a few niche topics. I can tell you how to create a mobile app using flutter and firebase. I can't tell you how to handle a relationship.

I can argue flutter is easier than react native without getting personal. I don't argue about my relationships, or anyone else's relationships. I have extremely strict criteria for anyone I let into my life, whether that be a friend or a partner. This has worked very well for me.

You're not going to find what you want in every single city, life can become drastically better just by moving.

But that's it. I don't need to argue about why I live where I do.

I don't need the validation of random people when it comes to my life decisions. However if you want to argue with me that I can get better server-side performance via a Rust backend rather than firebase, I might listen.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#648

Post by vlunkr »

gameswithgo wrote: post #539
smolder wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is not what I'd call cancer. Social media doesn't need to be an engagement-obsessed, emotionally charged misinformation hose. Social media is broader than the category that twitter and FB live in. It can be less toxic, but less toxic platforms are less exciting and don't get the same kind of attention , which is what all the toxic stuff optimizes for.

HN is heavily moderated, which is interesting given how often it is used as a platform to decry censorship.

I don't think that's a contradiction personally. Most reasonable people accept that some level of censorship is necessary for a good discussion, especially when hundreds or thousands of people are involved. HN style moderation doesn't exactly scale to twitter size easily though.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#649

Post by r00fus »

a4isms wrote: post #248
handrous wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“Rules for thee but not for me” is interesting when placed in juxtaposition with a famous quote from the software architect and composer Frank Wilhoit: Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. That applies to no-moonlighting clauses, but also to no sexual harassment clauses,…

I look at this and ask - from this analysis, what distinguishes conservatism from feudalism?

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#650

Post by chasd00 »

garmaine wrote: post #531
sdfghderwg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Elon Musk

He tends to focus on one or the other at a time though.

I'm sure he only focuses when things are really wrong. It must be awful to be fixing Tesla problems when SpaceX is humming along. Then switch to SpaceX when it's falling apart while Tesla is back on its feet. It's like a perpetual grass-is-greener problem regardless of which side of the fence you're on.

edit: a month or two ago there was this huge increase in SpaceX development all of a sudden that has since dwindled. I wonder if that was Musk working on SpaceX but now back at Tesla? of course i could be way off base too ( FAA thorn in SpaceX's side etc )

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