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We Don’t Need a New Twitter

calnewport.com

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Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#61

Post by Exuma »

pessimizer wrote: post #42
Exuma wrote: post #32

Headlines like this make me not read the article, because anyone who actually writes this headline seems to lack the unawareness that his opinion is literally 1 insignificant stupid opinion floating in a sea of 10 billion shitty opinions. Headlines like this are an immediate benefit to me because it allows authors to filter themselves out. There are so many better ways to offer takes on things that don't depend on th…

You seem to be arguing against people reading your comment.

I don't pose my comments as...

"Here's why we need to stop making headlines like this"

I said a statement of fact (to my own mind) which may be a fact or an opinion to someone else.

Regardless, never once in my opinion did I say "Heres whats best for you." I simply stated a fact about what I believe to be true, and what looks stupid to me.

I can't decide what is best for everyone else. Perhaps someone likes being spoon fed their decisions, and in this case the headline would be great for them, however that doesn't change my statement.

Also, my statements of facts/opinions could be wrong, and that is still further beside the point. Being wrong about something has nothing to do with me asserting that YOU would benefit from my opinion by adhering to it.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#62

Post by TillE »

sbszllr wrote: post #20

Twitter’s real value was its “global RSS” nature. You could get short, quick updates about local news, published papers, sports events, political happenings, and more. It made it easy to source info from your followers (or their followers) quickly. Think Ask HN but broader. Activity on Twitter is down now, mastodon and threads aren’t cutting it. There’s more activity on LinkedIn but it’s quite phoney. I genuinely fee…

Lots of people I know have half-migrated to Bluesky or totally moved to Mastodon, so my feed is much emptier than it used to be.

I'm pretty optimistic about the fediverse in the medium term, certainly for many communities. But right now twitter.com is still the default for organizations large and small, and I'm not sure that changes. It's gonna be a mess.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#63

Post by mark_l_watson »

I am a fan for Cal Newport's books and podcast. In general I think that the more consumer choices, the better. I agree however that Threads doesn't serve any of my purposes. I tried it for a few days.

I get a lot of value from Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/mark_l_watson) for very different purposes:

Mastodon is where I post personal and some tech stuff and read a lot of fairly random stuff.

I follow specific tech people on Twitter/X and that is my "morning tech news."

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#64

Post by gochi »

data-ottawa wrote: post #26
Apreche wrote: post #5

We 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.

All I want is somewhere the local fire station, mayor, power company, and transit companies, etc. ca share their updates in an easy to find place. Twitter solves real problems for them, but with the last year of changes clearly doesn’t value the requirements that use case needs.

Mastodon/AP should be the place most state agencies turn to. It's ridiculous they don't "own the pipe" and continue relying on other platforms as a primary method. It gives them everything they need OOB.

Canadian agencies getting shut out by Facebook is the shining proof of this. There should be no reason someone has to make an account with a foreign company just to get fast updates on what is happening locally, that's absurd.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#65

Post by agubelu »

flerchin wrote: post #14
dragontamer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? ----------- This past year, we've seen the collapse of trust in three community driven websites: 1. Twitter 2. Reddit 3. StackOv…

What did StackOverflow do?

Lately it's been overran with ChatGPT-generated answers.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#66

Post by the_third_wave »

PaulHoule wrote: post #13

When I first started using Mastodon I felt a bit overwhelmed by angry toots from certain communities. One of my pet peeves is leftists who, just as the John Birch Society saw "communists" everywhere, now see "fascists" everywhere. (For the record I am a leftist, a friend and I were the first people to put Chomsky audio lectures on the web, I've been to Howie Hawkins' house, etc.) It was clear to me that the "explore"…

> For the record I am a leftist, a friend and I were the first people to put Chomsky audio lectures on the web, I've been to Howie Hawkins' house, etc.

Sad to see you feel the need to include this disclaimer to be able to voice your opinion without being labelled by those same "leftists" here on HN. Yes, there are plenty of people here who are quick to downvote and throw accusations of -ism/-ist/-phobia your way when you venture outside of their "safe spaces" but... who cares?. This labelling says far more about the people attaching labels to anything which goes against their world view than it does about the persons being labelled. Just let them put their silly stickers and click that downvote button, with your ~50K karma you can spare a few for the good cause of freedom of expression without fear of retaliation.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#67

Post by zzzeek »

Pannoniae wrote: post #44
zzzeek wrote: post #23

Twitter was doing just fine when it banned nazis and covid disinformation. to call this "a more sanitized and boring experience" is textbook black and white reasoning. moderation is hard, but twitter's new "moderation is the CEO personally bans the accounts he's personally offended by, while people who share child exploitation videos are celebrated and paid cash" [1] is not the way to do it. [1] https://www.mediamatt…

Disinformation is whatever powers decide it is. I remember when saying "wearing masks helps" was considered misinformation for a short time... Censoring "misinformation" is just a thinly veiled justification to censor anything which is uncomfortable for whoever has power.

go read about the conspiracy theories on that link I sent, I know it's uncomfortable to have to draw a line between "things that were uncertain at one point, people misspoke, the wrong message went out for a period of time" and "completely fabricated conspiracy theories that are wildly made up by malignant actors intended to harm the most people possible", but unfortunately these things have to be done.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#68

Post by waihtis »

pavlov wrote: post #59
waihtis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.. and of course, the "rocket man bad" crowd are very anti X for obvious reasons.

> "the "rocket man bad" crowd are very anti X for obvious reasons" Who's "rocket man"? Isn't that what Trump called Kim Jong-un? I guess you're right and there's probably a substantial overlap between those who don't like North Korea and those who don't like Musk's Twitter.

Trump? Do you mean "orange man"?

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#69

Post by the_third_wave »

smoldesu wrote: post #27
PaulHoule wrote: post #13

When I first started using Mastodon I felt a bit overwhelmed by angry toots from certain communities. One of my pet peeves is leftists who, just as the John Birch Society saw "communists" everywhere, now see "fascists" everywhere. (For the record I am a leftist, a friend and I were the first people to put Chomsky audio lectures on the web, I've been to Howie Hawkins' house, etc.) It was clear to me that the "explore"…

Another great tool on Mastodon is the "block all from instane" button. Birds of a feather flock together, so blocking the most egregious offenders is a fast-track to keeping your TL clean (in my experience).

That button may as well be called the echo chamber construction button since that is what it will eventually achieve. An open mind for a different view is a good thing, it does not mean you need to make that view your own but it does mean you should be open to the fact that others think and act in different ways from your own.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#70

Post by teddyh »

Apreche wrote: post #5

We 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.

> See smoke in the distance? Twitter can tell you all about the fire way before the local news.

At some point in the past, IRC was the place to find this.

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