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Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

reuters.com

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Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#401

Post by rapfaria »

MarcScott wrote: post #178

Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me in the slightest. I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.

Problem is, even if you are careful about who you follow, they will eventually start tweeting about US politics, world views, etc. I follow mostly sports, but can't stand influencer devs, etc.

One exception is wesbos of course, maybe I just like the guy since he not always tweets about programming and I still enjoy his content.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#402

Post by rootusrootus »

noobermin wrote: post #387

The level of hero worship on this site is bizarre, not even for someone for their technical acumen, but just because they are a figure in the broader culture. It's really disappointing, actually.

I don't hate the guy, but I am slightly disappointed that this is the best we can get for a real world imitation of Tony Stark.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#404

Post by president »

Jaruzel wrote: post #254

The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to enforce a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1] identities for all users/bots (opt-in, where others by default filter out non-verified accounts in their feeds) Bots can continue to exist, but must be identifiable as such and connected to a verified real user. Not only will this clean up twitter dramatically, it will also push off those who wish to hide beh…

Agreed. At the very least, fully verified identities on the backend and anonymity on the frontend.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#406

Post by throwaway894345 »

MarcScott wrote: post #178

Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me in the slightest. I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.

I've been active on Twitter for a while, but I haven't gone through the trouble of "curating" which is to say, using a third party client to avoid the (often propagandist) spam and blocking everyone who says insane shit. And it's not just a simple matter of "being careful about who you follow" since you can follow people who have reasonably well-articulated opinions, but whose followers (or others attracted to their Tweets) are toxic and may number into the tens or hundreds of thousands (e.g., Matt Yglesias posts a lot of interesting stuff, but the comments are often a shit-show). That's a lot of shit to wade through.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#407

Post by whiddershins »

qgin wrote: post #113

“Everything that isn’t illegal is allowed” sounds great until you see what that actually means on the internet. Anyone who has ever worked in content moderation / trust & safety knows what kind of unrelenting deluge of obnoxious / disturbing / spam-filled / miserable race to the bottom of the lizard brain stuff that is constantly being pushed back on any moderately popular social media site. It seems so easy from a d…

It’s weird that no one thinks algorithms can make a big dent in this without banning people.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#408

Post by misiti3780 »

scop wrote: post #68

I wish him and the team the very best. Social media is an incredibly hard problem that by no means has been solved. I raise a glass to a man who has successfully tackled hard problems and seeks to make the future better.

I know a lot of people disagree but I really do think killing the ad side and killing all bots will solve 90% of the problems.

I know they need to find other revenue other than ads, Elon might be able to find a replacement once it's a private company.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#409

Post by alex_sf »

qgin wrote: post #113

“Everything that isn’t illegal is allowed” sounds great until you see what that actually means on the internet. Anyone who has ever worked in content moderation / trust & safety knows what kind of unrelenting deluge of obnoxious / disturbing / spam-filled / miserable race to the bottom of the lizard brain stuff that is constantly being pushed back on any moderately popular social media site. It seems so easy from a d…

> unrelenting deluge of obnoxious / disturbing / spam-filled / miserable race to the bottom of the lizard brain stuff that is constantly being pushed back on any moderately popular social media site.

I keep hearing this, and it makes no sense.

1) Add a block button. 2) Don't surface random content to users. 3) (Optional) hard restrictions on private messages.

This solves the issue entirely, with no need to moderate anything that isn't illegal.

The simple fact is that this is a really easy problem to solve. Companies just don't want to implement 2).

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#410

Post by tuestuesday »

MarcScott wrote: post #178

Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me in the slightest. I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.

I tried that approach but was unable to achieve what you seem to have. I would constantly get "someone who ___ follows posted x" or likes y which meant that I was exposed constantly to vitriol and general ugliness. After a few years of trying (read clicking "stop showing me this" over and over) I gave up and deleted the account.

Not sure why my experience was different but I was trying to make the site work in good faith and didn't feel politically targeted. I just was unable to keep anger and reactivity off my feed from accounts I didn't even follow.

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