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We don’t need a new Twitter

newyorker.com

31–40 of 102 posts

Re: We don’t need a new Twitter

#33
post #23

[flagged]

As a long-time enjoyer and early promoter of social media, I disagree with your translation. The real problem is that either due to algorithms or some inherent quirk of human nature, global public social media has become awful . Let me characterize the awfulness with a joke that showcases the vibe shift. You tweet/post: “I love sandwiches” 2009 twitter: “Omg I too love sandwiches! Let’s be friends, follow me back” 20…

This is a natural consequence of Twitter's design, which rewards attention and users with high follower counts. "Omg I too love sandwiches" is not going to get a lot of likes, whereas outrage sells. There's no way to punish toxic behavior, so the only direction is up.

Re: We don’t need a new Twitter

#34
post #27
post #17

What if I want a platform without open antisemitism (or any for that matter), and that doesn't promote emotionally charged content as much?

Move to Mastodon.

Or rather; "Move to the appropriate bubble of Mastodon where the views align with your own"

Re: We don’t need a new Twitter

#35
post #9

See also this thread from yesterday, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37147914 "Thousands of scientists are cutting back from Twitter" Essentially, a survey published in Nature about twitter usage among scientists dropping, in part, because of the phenomena mentioned in this New Yorker article. Eg: "Žiga Malek, an environmental scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam, mentioned in the survey that he had sta…

If you don't follow people, they don't show up in your feed.

If you lurk on the firehose you get it all. Including all the parts you may disagree with or find despicable or... Perhaps also something nice?

I really don't get this point... What do you expect exactly on a large platform?

Re: We don’t need a new Twitter

#37
The article presents small discussion forums as safe and cosy, which they can be, but their insular nature also makes them a perfect breeding ground for extremist views. We shouldn’t ignore that most of the radical politics and conspiracy theories swirling Twitter are born in such small forums.

Re: We don’t need a new Twitter

#38

[flagged]

That is a wildly lazy "translation" of the subtitle of an article you clearly didn't actually read or engage with. His argument boils down to none of the above, and your final point is such an incredibly ironic statement, that it's hard to believe it wasn't intentional.

Twitter is, to his point, largely a worthless platform for discussion if you don't heavily curate your experience, because it does, by design (unintentionally, possibly), massively elevate bad takes, noise, and quick, pithy attacks, because they're easy to propagate, and it very clearly downgrades any argument that requires more than a few hundred characters to present (especially now, with the changes to how threaded conversations can be linked). Threads idea of moderating that changes the dynamic and value. Neither is actually good, and neither is particularly beneficial compared to other models.

But sure, "governments" and "media companies" and rabble rabble rabble. Next time, RTFA.

Re: We don’t need a new Twitter

#40
post #25
post #2

Haven’t we seen the same public discourse time and time again? A lot of people left FB half a decade ago, before that it was something else. I suspect we’ll keep seeing the same thing again. People want to be consumed by social network probably to their own detriment

Michael Goldharber said it best - people have limited attention to give anything, but unlimited capacity to receive attention. Exploitation of that inequality keeps the Attention Economy afloat. Its also why HN stays afloat, even though the architecture ensures the amount of content consumed is a small insignificant fraction of the content produced. Ideally we track content consumed/content produced gives us a ratio…

> people have limited attention to give anything, but unlimited capacity to receive attention.

Oh that's a great quote. I'm off to build a 1-900 service that will just say 'yes' and 'wow' and 'sure, but what about you' whenever the speaker pauses long enough.

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