The Argument Machine • Hacker News Board

Re: The Argument Machine

#11

Post by VLM » Mon, Oct 28, 2013, 2:14 PM UTC

"But every time I see some innocuous tweet spawn another long, bile-filled thread of awfulness, I become less interested in tweeting."

He's giving us the answer we all want to hear; what we appeal to. Reality of course is the opposite, and manufactured drama attracts a lot better than education, for example.

The article's argument is something like if people wanted to learn something they'd go to wikipedia or stack exchange, but they don't, they want to read (manufactured) drama. So twitter makes money off them. It would be a much harder sell for twitter to move into SE or wikipedia's turf, so they don't and shouldn't if they want to make money.

Re: The Argument Machine

#12

Post by schenecstasy » Mon, Oct 28, 2013, 2:36 PM UTC

How dare he post this on his personal blog? That post is the property of Medium.

Re: The Argument Machine

#13

Post by fraying » Mon, Oct 28, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

schenecstasy wrote: post #12

How dare he post this on his personal blog? That post is the property of Medium.

I posted it there, too. https://medium.com/from-powazek-com/ff85e8c2b2f7

Re: The Argument Machine

#14

Post by fraying » Mon, Oct 28, 2013, 4:49 PM UTC

jcutrell wrote: post #8

There's a lot of this that I agree with, but there's also a lot of it that is limited by personal experience. I for one have never had a fight on Twitter - the closest thing being when I complained about my poor Comcast service - so I can't say I resonate with all of these things. However, something that should be pointed out: brevity is not inherently the cause for misunderstanding. Brevity is a constraint. Don't tr…

True! Brevity is only one part of the equation. But it's clear that being unable to explain yourself completely is one ingredient of a hot misunderstanding pie.

Re: The Argument Machine

#15

Post by fraying » Mon, Oct 28, 2013, 4:50 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #2

I think a lot of the antagonism you see from certain open source communities comes from Twitter nowadays. (That is, angry debates exist everywhere, but it leaks out of Twitter better than someone going crazy in an IRC channel.) Ten years ago, you had to write a blog post and hit publish.. and that gave you a chance to reflect and retract. But now you can tap out a gut reaction to the latest drama and keep the feedbac…

Yes! This.

Re: The Argument Machine

#16

Post by fraying » Mon, Oct 28, 2013, 4:54 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #5

> "If Twitter cared about avoiding arguments, there are so many things they could do: remove the outdated character limit, let us edit tweets, create progressive circles of privacy, don’t let retweets out of our networks, slow the whole thing down, and encourage smaller communities." If they try to do this, they may as well tell their users to move to Facebook and close shop. Twitter is what it is precisely because o…

I realize that. Writing that sentence gave me a cold chill. But I kept it in because I thought it was important to list some solutions, even if they were things Twitter would never do.

Still, I think there are ways a community tool could be designed to discourage angry arguments without becoming Facebook, which has its share of problems, too.