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Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

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Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#41

Post by Herbstluft »

Until not that long ago I was a pretty happy Twitter user. I curated my follows (keeping them between 150 and 200), only followed people posting interesting, creative, or scientific things. When anyone started tweeting or retweeting low quality material, I simply unfollowed.

Unfortunately, the devs at Twitter hate the way I use it. Nowadays ever 5th post or so on my timeline is from someone I do not follow, either "people you follow follow this" or "might be interesting to you" crap.

It's almost always drama, politics, provocations, people screaming at each other, or a mix of those things.

I can vividly imagine what the timelines of casuals users look like...and it becomes obvious why social media are such hubs for hatred and perpetual drama.

There is little "to solve", because the biggest problems of social media are explicitly created by social media companies.

Or as someone would call it whose business it is to manipulate you and to make you miserable (like the devs at Twitter and Facebook): "creating engagement".

Allow users to properly curate their timelines. Then we can at least take the claim that social media companies actually want anything to improve serious.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#42

Post by hunter2_ »

mFixman wrote: post #14

I used to agree with you until I created a new Twitter account from scratch. I'm not American and I specifically put non-political things in my interests. Yet, the second I signed up I got the following: 1. A notification about a smug reply a rando made to a Republican Congressman. 2. Posts from a meme page with a Pepe the frog avatar showing homeless people fighting in San Francisco. 3. Somebody I don't follow accus…

> see what the rest of the world see

If using a new account is so atypical that people need to be prompted to try it, then is it really what the rest of the world sees? I'd assume the vast majority of the rest of the world highly curates their accounts by utilizing the Follow feature; the effect of moving beyond the randomness should be similar regardless of whether they are a relatively new user following only a few accounts or a seasoned user following thousands.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#43

Post by xiphias2 »

iinnPP wrote: post #30

I ran an official fan site once, for an EA title of all things. Doing this I learned some neat tricks to limit the amount of administration required. One thing that stuck was that there is a huge benefit to maintaining a specific section for garbage posts. Sticky threads existed titled: Potentially offensive/spam? Post it here. Everyone used it and followed the very few rules of the spam board. I rarely had to move a…

It looks cool, but right now there are 2 sides of the same coin. Maybe one would need a ,,victim / possibly being offended'' section as well.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#44

Post by jen20 »

photochemsyn wrote: post #27

I just set up a Twitter account for the first time, to see what the Musk era is like. One immediate issue I notice is that the recommendation algorithm immediately starts siloing you into a roomfull of mirrors. Based on who you follow, it recommends similar people to follow (based apparently on who your followees follow plus maybe other data), so you quickly end up in an echo chamber. That's not the whole story, Twit…

> Based on who you follow, it recommends similar people to follow

I would actually be rather happy if this were the case beyond the trivial examples. For example, if I were to create an account and follow someone from the Linux kernel or open-source licensing space, and I got recommendations of other people working in that are, that would be _great_.

Instead, I got Joe Rogan and AOC forced into my timeline because that is what maximizes rage and thus engagement. I'm out.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#45

Post by semi-extrinsic »

pj_mukh wrote: post #40
mFixman wrote: post #14

I used to agree with you until I created a new Twitter account from scratch. I'm not American and I specifically put non-political things in my interests. Yet, the second I signed up I got the following: 1. A notification about a smug reply a rando made to a Republican Congressman. 2. Posts from a meme page with a Pepe the frog avatar showing homeless people fighting in San Francisco. 3. Somebody I don't follow accus…

Here's the uncomfortable question though, can a social media platform achieve sufficient scale, so its more useful for discoverability than your group chats, without optimizing for engagement? Discord is a happy medium (just, really large group chats).

TikTok, for all its woes, seems to somehow do this significantly better than Twitter and Facebook? Or is that just my filter bubble?

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#46

Post by BeefWellington »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #20
BeefWellington wrote: post #3

What I want is pretty simple (and isn't for everyone): I just want a spot I can keep tabs on the broader goings on of other people in infosec.

> I just want a spot I can keep tabs on the broader goings on of other people in infosec. I think this is the problem Twitter/Musk has - Twitter isn't one product but a million. Just about every user has their own way of using Twitter - from finding out about what's goings on in some niche (work, sport, hobby), seeing what celebrities are doing, asking their community questions, discussing politics, finding out news,…

The other problem is that the majority of advertisers don't want to spend their ad dollars on a platform full of people spamming various racial slurs. If that's what happens as a result of Twitter's changes in policies, and there's a flight of advertisers, I'm not sure what end result there is for Twitter except hemorrhaging money for Musk until he shuts it down.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#47

Post by legitster »

mFixman wrote: post #14

I used to agree with you until I created a new Twitter account from scratch. I'm not American and I specifically put non-political things in my interests. Yet, the second I signed up I got the following: 1. A notification about a smug reply a rando made to a Republican Congressman. 2. Posts from a meme page with a Pepe the frog avatar showing homeless people fighting in San Francisco. 3. Somebody I don't follow accus…

> 3. Somebody I don't follow accusing another person I don't follow of being a nazi.

I cannot believe how much of Twitter is exactly this.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#48

Post by jen20 »

pjc50 wrote: post #19
Swizec wrote: post #7

> surveys to find the "why" and how we might be able to fix it or avoid it from happening again A 2-party system will always create polarization and lead to black/white thinking in all aspects of life I think. As a European moving to USA, the part I miss most about back home is the willingness to think of all issues as “Well there’s 5+ sides to this, let’s discuss”. I think that outlook stems directly from our multip…

Certain parts of non-US twitter were "polarized" enough to start the Arab Spring, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (leading to its current situation), and it seems that through social media of some sort Iran is currently undergoing a revolt against its own morality police. A huge part of Twitter's popularity and success is linked to its role in coordinating anti-authoritarian action.

> Orange Revolution in Ukraine (leading to its current situation)

A gross mischaracterization of which you should be utterly ashamed. Responsibility for the current situation in Ukraine lies at the feet of one man, Putin, and those who continue to enable him.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#49

Post by lanstin »

Herbstluft wrote: post #41

Until not that long ago I was a pretty happy Twitter user. I curated my follows (keeping them between 150 and 200), only followed people posting interesting , creative , or scientific things. When anyone started tweeting or retweeting low quality material, I simply unfollowed. Unfortunately, the devs at Twitter hate the way I use it. Nowadays ever 5th post or so on my timeline is from someone I do not follow, either…

Do you use the time based fed or the default timeline feed?

I use only the time based feed, and I read on my tablet zoomed into the middle third of the screen so I don’t really see trending or whatever. I do follow a lot more people than you, but I agree when that is all you see, it is like a allow listed Reddit, pretty easy to make an interest and entertaining content feed.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#50

Post by dathinab »

It's true that a lot of this things are not technical problems.

But you can create systems which amplify such behaviour and systems which avoid such behaviour in many ways.

Similar you can design systems which enable fraud, especially social-engineering based ones and you can build systems which makes fraud harder.

And one thing which anyone having run any kind of discussion platform weather in the internet or physically knows is you need proper and strict moderation or things will go down hill.

Twitter always had been doing a soso job. And as far as I can tell things will get worse, not better with how Musks is approaching things as he seem to either not understand the problems or doesn't care.

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