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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

#71

Post by dsr_ »

Exuma wrote: post #51
dsr_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"An Essay In Which I Present Points About The Social Media Service Formerly Known As Twitter, Arguing That Newer Systems Should Not Attempt To Duplicate It Because That Would Reduce Their Value To Society." or "We Don't Need A New Twitter" and trust that people will supply context.

So ... someone or some entity should not attempt to start a new Twitter-style because Cal Newport says it will emphasize negativity? Surely the vast amount of brainpower could go into perhaps modifying the style or the algorithm, or tweet length, or some variable to help? Surely there is an embedded solution, somewhere in there. That's why I'm saying headlines like this are stupid, there are literally near infinite v…

>Do you think companies read Cal Newports blog and are like "gee I guess building a new twitter clone exactly like it is could lead to increased world negativity... better not do it"

Well, yes, that's his intent: to influence people by presenting his opinion.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#72

Post by Exuma »

dsr_ wrote: post #71
Exuma wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So ... someone or some entity should not attempt to start a new Twitter-style because Cal Newport says it will emphasize negativity? Surely the vast amount of brainpower could go into perhaps modifying the style or the algorithm, or tweet length, or some variable to help? Surely there is an embedded solution, somewhere in there. That's why I'm saying headlines like this are stupid, there are literally near infinite v…

>Do you think companies read Cal Newports blog and are like "gee I guess building a new twitter clone exactly like it is could lead to increased world negativity... better not do it" Well, yes, that's his intent: to influence people by presenting his opinion.

Interesting... so given that is true, do you think Cal Newport believes:

1) Twitter-clone emphasizing negativity not solvable in any possible way

2) He has considered every single solution that exists in the entire problem space, even those which might take teams of minds to come up with answers to

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#73

Post by natch »

waihtis wrote: post #41
waihtis wrote: post #39

The people demanding a "new twitter" are those who set up weird hierarchies and benefitted from the obscure, hidden "blue checkmark" game - more often than not, their only tweets were lukewarm pro-current thing babble. I don't miss old twitter a bit.

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

Obvious? Maybe ICE driver guilt, but I have never heard a reason that made sense except for some vague accusations that too much fun is being had and that is somehow offensive.

And yeah he’s made some mistakes which I guess is unforgivable because, well, it goes back to fun being offensive.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#74

Post by dragontamer »

randomdata wrote: post #54
dragontamer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For better or for worse, Wikipedia is devoid of advertising revenue, and therefore seemingly immune to these ups and downs to the ad-tech market like Twitter/Reddit have been this past year.

Meaning that the marker of success is stable revenue? In other words, someone who keeps a minimum wage job their entire life could be the most successful person around?

I'd say being in a position where you aren't forced to piss off the moderators to make more advertisement revenue is a major advantage this year.

It's not about revenue. I'm talking about trust, so that the crowd is willing to curate data for you.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#75

Post by rvz »

waihtis wrote: post #41
waihtis wrote: post #39

The people demanding a "new twitter" are those who set up weird hierarchies and benefitted from the obscure, hidden "blue checkmark" game - more often than not, their only tweets were lukewarm pro-current thing babble. I don't miss old twitter a bit.

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

Exactly. Whilst many here are still screaming about Twitter / X collapsing with yet 220M+ daily active users. Their predictions were quite deranged:

Prediction 1:

November 2022 was meant to be the time when Twitter / X the social network and service was 'predicted' to implode in the coming weeks after the layoffs [0][1] and not be up and running globally.

Reality: In reality, it is still up and running and working today with hundreds of millions of users using it right now.

Prediction 2:

Threads was supposed to "hollow out Twitter in extremely rapid fashion" [2] and one predicted to give it a couple of months for Threads to do just that.

Reality: Well, we have given it two months and Threads is the one that is hollowing itself out in "extremely rapid fashion" and lost 80% of its users after signing up to the service. [3]

Prediction 3:

The outages Twitter / X had would make the majority of users migrating elsewhere and they will stick around on the new service.

Reality:

Anyone who knows about network effects knows that obviously didn't happen and was less effective since even when Twitter / X went down the users would rather wait for it to get back up than to fully migrate off the network.

Conclusion:

So you see at this point we gave it enough time for the Twitter / X predictions by the doomsday folks and and it seems that all of those predictions were alarmist false prophesies by a few extremely angry techies who won't admit they were incorrect.

[0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/08/1062886/heres-ho...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34617964

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36580669

[3] https://gizmodo.com/threads-has-lost-more-than-80-of-daily-a...

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#76

Post by rvz »

macintux wrote: post #53
rvz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your post basically says "it's bizarre you're expressing your opinion, don't do that" - that is not healthy for productive conversation (ironically op's point about those products) No it doesn't. They're just saying, millions are still using and enjoying Twitter / X and that is fine. If you don't like it, that is also fine and you can still be happy anyway. I don't see a problem with that. There is no need to misin…

The fact that Twitter and Facebook are driving divisiveness and misinformation definitely impacts my life, regardless of my lack of engagement with the platforms.

If you don't like those websites, you are free to block them for yourself if they are spreading 'misinformation'.

You can still be happy with blocking them and that is also fine.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#77

Post by randomdata »

dragontamer wrote: post #74
randomdata wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meaning that the marker of success is stable revenue? In other words, someone who keeps a minimum wage job their entire life could be the most successful person around?

I'd say being in a position where you aren't forced to piss off the moderators to make more advertisement revenue is a major advantage this year. It's not about revenue. I'm talking about trust, so that the crowd is willing to curate data for you.

If access to moderators is the metric of success, Wikipedia claims to have ~900 moderator accounts currently. Reddit, in 2017, claimed to have ~75,000 moderators. Unfortunately the later figure is severely dated, but has Reddit really lost over 74,000 moderator accounts since? That seems unlikely.

Perhaps Wikipedia has never been successful, just something that has managed to continue to exist?

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#78

Post by smoldesu »

the_third_wave wrote: post #69
smoldesu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I doubt it. My feed is still open; new and unknown content will inevitably make it's way into my feed. It's mostly just nice to have the nuclear option for dedicated troll instances or known hate groups. You don't have to block those people if you don't want to, but my feed is much better off without them.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#79

Post by theamk »

gochi wrote: post #64
data-ottawa wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sadly, many town agencies (my town included) are pretty bad with technology. For example, my town has official website with "calendar" and "news" sections, but it has much less info than Twitter feeds, especially for urgent events like "unexpected street closure". And police department almost never uses that website.

I have no definite knowledge, but I suspect that city hall wants to control what appears in resources they own.. and as a result, other agencies found it easier to make an account on Twitter rather than deal with town's commnication manager.

Re: We Don’t Need a New Twitter

#80

Post by PaulHoule »

the_third_wave wrote: post #66
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…

One thing I like about Hacker News is that there is very little of that BS.

Mastodon loses the right wing trolls (although I hear there are a handful of widely blocked servers) but has the minus that it does have a subculture of people who normalize othering and dehumanizing behavior in each other.

It also has a large "silent majority" of nice folks but the effects of chronological feed + boosting amplifies a loud minority beyond their actual numbers.

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