We Don’t Need a New Twitter
calnewport.com
We Don’t Need a New Twitter
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Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter
#2When thinking of the real value of Twitter, I end up thinking about how it seemed when it was first on the scene. For a short while, users as a group were using it "correctly" (or maybe "usefully," or "sanely"): reporters found it to be a great way to get breaking stories out in the public sphere. I remember what for me remains "peak" Twitter- following a favorite investigative journalist who happened to be near ground zero of a hunt for a dangerous criminal. He gave up-to-the-minute updates that read like the best crime fiction. When the guy was apprehended, the nation uttered a sigh of relief that one could feel, and Twitter made me feel like I was if not on the scene, at least had an incredibly candid perspective on it.
The worst I've ever seen from Twitter is our attempts to have a "global conversation" about nothing. It's like the erratic chatter at the end of a party when we all have to start contemplating our real lives, start begging people for rides or if we're needy, squeezing a little more ego stroking before the sun rises. It's depressing, moody and manipulative and feels dirty and gritty like tired smoke-irritated eyes. It and Threads can both go away and I'd be perfectly happy.
Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter
#3Twitter need distributed editorship. If a tweet is inflammatory, viral, or incorrect, a group of respected users can suppress it or edit them to remove bait headlines. This would be similar to the Wikipedia editor model. Editors can be elected and their actions would be a matter of public record. This would give us a democratic republic of tweets. Eventually users would learn to tweet quality items.
Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter
#4Twitter need distributed editorship. If a tweet is inflammatory, viral, or incorrect, a group of respected users can suppress it or edit them to remove bait headlines. This would be similar to the Wikipedia editor model. Editors can be elected and their actions would be a matter of public record. This would give us a democratic republic of tweets. Eventually users would learn to tweet quality items.
It already has that in Community Notes.
Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter
#5We don’t need all of what Twitter did, but we need some of it.
The biggest thing Twitter did that nothing else could match was getting extremely specific or local news quickly.
Is some web service down? Twitter is faster for info than both isup.me and the official status page.
See smoke in the distance? Twitter can tell you all about the fire way before the local news.
Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter
#6Twitter need distributed editorship. If a tweet is inflammatory, viral, or incorrect, a group of respected users can suppress it or edit them to remove bait headlines. This would be similar to the Wikipedia editor model. Editors can be elected and their actions would be a matter of public record. This would give us a democratic republic of tweets. Eventually users would learn to tweet quality items.
That doesn't sound a huge distance away from how Community Notes works.
Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter
#7Twitter need distributed editorship. If a tweet is inflammatory, viral, or incorrect, a group of respected users can suppress it or edit them to remove bait headlines. This would be similar to the Wikipedia editor model. Editors can be elected and their actions would be a matter of public record. This would give us a democratic republic of tweets. Eventually users would learn to tweet quality items.
Unlike Wikipedia, Twitter, in its current usage, is not a list of author-less posts. They are attributed directly to the author.
Having someone else make edits in their behalf seems to only make the experience worse, not better.
Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter
#8Twitter need distributed editorship. If a tweet is inflammatory, viral, or incorrect, a group of respected users can suppress it or edit them to remove bait headlines. This would be similar to the Wikipedia editor model. Editors can be elected and their actions would be a matter of public record. This would give us a democratic republic of tweets. Eventually users would learn to tweet quality items.
Wikipedia being a non-profit, and Jimmy Wales being a respected leader, is key to Wikipedia's success.
Why should I contribute to the curation of a for-profit company? Especially if Twitter will simply be sold off to the highest-bidder, such as a rich narcissist with a chip on his shoulder?
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This past year, we've seen the collapse of trust in three community driven websites:
1. Twitter
2. Reddit
3. StackOverflow
It turns out that for-profit companies seem to have good morals when there's plenty of money floating around. But the moment venture capitalism dries up, we get this year. All three making user-hostile and anti-moderator choices.
Curation of communities takes _work_. Work that people have been demotivated to do in various forms. Wikipedia has kept its moderators / editor base motivated... and I think the non-profit status is part of the key here.
Or at very least, the advertising approach that Twitter, Reddit, and kinda-sorta StackOverflow, has is probably unable to make a long-lasting trustful community.
Twitter and Reddit will continue existing of course. But I don't think we're going to have the communities of yesteryear anymore.
Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter
#9[dead]
Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter
#10When thinking of the real value of Twitter, I end up thinking about how it seemed when it was first on the scene. For a short while, users as a group were using it "correctly" (or maybe "usefully," or "sanely"): reporters found it to be a great way to get breaking stories out in the public sphere. I remember what for me remains "peak" Twitter- following a favorite investigative journalist who happened to be near grou…
I find comments like that your last sentence so bizarre. Just don't use them and you can still be happy?
Millions of people use and enjoy X, it's ok if you don't.